He was fastest in every session, he led every lap, and he carved big lumps out of Valentino Rossi's championship lead. Jorge Lorenzo had the perfect weekend at Estoril and exerted more than a little pressure on his team-mate. Rossi struggled to fourth, 23 seconds behind Lorenzo. By the time Vale was over the line Jorge was walking in slow motion through the gravel trap in front of his fan club to plant a Lorenzo's Land flag. The slo-mo went very well with the spaceman look he's been sporting all weekend - he even wore the Neil Armstrong replica helmet to the rostrum Valentino didn't look too amused.

Rossi's problem was a total lack of edge grip from the start, it didn't help that this morning's warm-up was cold and damp so there was no chance to test one of Jerry Burgess's magic fixes. It looks as if they went too far with trying to get the M1 to turn and took too much weight off the rear.

Casey looked almost shocked on the rostrum and later took delight in putting a few critics right. Kevin Schwantz got a special mention, "I lost a lot of respect for him; it just shows experience doesn't count for anything.

Valentino's other problem occupied the second spot on the rostrum. Welcome back Casey Stoner. All the old pace and aggression was there, and thankfully so was the stamina. He was in the 1min 37sec bracket all race, only going into the 38s on the last six of 28 laps. Pedrosa in third dropped into the 38s one lap earlier. Casey looked almost shocked on the rostrum and later took delight in putting a few critics right. Kevin Schwantz got a special mention, "I lost a lot of respect for him; it just shows experience doesn't count for anything."

This was reported to Nicky Hayden who said he expected Casey to come back the way he did - and he didn't think number-34 would be losing too much sleep. Nicky himself was disappointed with his race after going well in warm-up. The Duke felt loose and lacked traction. He lost over a second a lap to his team-mate and couldn't hide his disappointment. Come to think of it, if you'd been on the moon for the last nine weeks you'd have never have known that Casey had taken that sabbatical. The only clue would have been the look of relief on sundry Ducati management people's faces.