250cc World Champion Pedrosa has made a sensational start to his
MotoGP career and is third in the championship, six points behind Hayden and just three points in front of Rossi - who looked back to best in Qatar. The seven times world champion is determined to fight back from his disastrous start to the season in
Jerez - and, chatter permitting, is sure to be fighting for victory on Sunday. Rossi admits that Istanbul is not his favourite circuit, but finished second last year and will be looking to go one better on Sunday to close the 14-point gap on Capirossi and silence those ever more threatening youngsters.
Two of those, Elias and Stoner, currently share fifth place in the championship. Australian Stoner won the 250cc race in Turkey last year and has made an amazing start to his MotoGP career, riding the LCR Honda. He started the race in Qatar from pole position, led for a long period, but finally slipped to fifth when his tyres started to slide. Elias, riding the Fortuna Honda has been equally impressive with fourth and eighth places. The Spaniard was sixth last year in the race won by his new team-mate
Marco Melandri who went on to win the final race of the year in Valencia.
The Italian former 250cc World Champion is slowly but surely recovering the form that saw him finish runner-up in the 2005 championship and will want to pull back the 20-point advantage that Capirossi has established over him at the front.
There are plenty of others capable of fighting for a podium finish in this third round, looking at the evidence of the first two encounters.
Shinya Nakano is slightly disappointed with his current eighth place in the standings after a tremendous winter of testing on the Kawasaki.
Former 500cc World Champion
Kenny Roberts is revitalised riding for his Dad’s Oxfordshire-based team on the Honda powered KR machine. He shares that eighth place with Nakano, with former MotoGP runner-up Sete Gibernau a further point adrift after a mixed start to his Ducati career.
