The last six
MotoGP races have seen six different winners and this weekend's Turkish Grand Prix could well produce a seventh, as Istanbul Park hosts the most unpredictable event yet of the new 800cc era.
Championship leader
Valentino Rossi bookends that win list, with his victory in the 2006 Malaysian Grand Prix being followed by wins for
Marco Melandri,
Loris Capirossi,
Toni Elias and
Troy Bayliss.
Casey Stoner then triumphed in the opening round of 2007, before Rossi returned to the top last time out at
Jerez - and the Italian now leads the championship by nine points from young guns Stoner and
Dani Pedrosa.
But the first two rounds of the 2007 championship were both at circuits where the teams and riders had tested their new 800cc machines before the start of the season. That isn’t the case at Istanbul, where they will all arrive with a blank piece of paper, while new rules for this season mean that all Michelin and
Bridgestone riders must select their tyres before the grand prix weekend begins - in this case without any testing data - adding yet more uncertainty.
Nevertheless, Rossi arrives full of confidence after his impressive victory in Jerez and is sure to be in contention for his first ever Istanbul win, but is likely to face stiff opposition from the likes of 21-year old Stoner, who won the 250cc Turkish race two years ago and finished second in a fabulous MotoGP race with Melandri last year. Melandri is the only rider to have won a MotoGP race at Istanbul, with victory in both previous events, but will need to turn around a disappointing start to the year if he is to claim a hat-trick this weekend.
The best chance of a seventh different winner rests with Pedrosa, who finished second to Stoner by less than one hundredth of a second in the 250cc race two years ago and last year crashed out of third place on the last lap of the MotoGP race… which he’d started from 16th on the grid.
Rossi’s Fiat Yamaha team-mate and former World Superbike champion
Colin Edwards looks very comfortable on the new 800cc M1 - his third place at Jerez pushing him into fourth in the championship - but fellow countryman
Nicky Hayden is hanging on by his finger nails. The reigning world champion finished third in Turkey last year but is struggling on the new Repsol Honda and is already 28 points behind Rossi after finishing just eighth and seventh in his first two rides with the #1 plate.
