Or is Toseland's style just pure hard racing? You have to remember that he was riding with the twin burdens of a bronchitis attack - the guy was as hoarse as a 60-a-day septuagenarian on Saturday - and a bike that's down on power compared to most of his rivals. If you can't pass ‘em down the straight, you've got to muscle it through the corners.
Toseland and his Tech 3 team-mate
Colin Edwards will receive Yamaha's more powerful pneumatic-valve engine for the next round at Estoril next month. It's unlikely that this man-in-a-hurry will modify his forthright riding manners, though.
Sunday pm - I'm Da Boss, Says Rossi
'Who is Yamaha's No 1?' Spain's daily sports newspaper
La Marca asked yesterday after flavour-of-the-season
Jorge Lorenzo had headed
Valentino Rossi on the opening day of practice at
Jerez.
Today Rossi provided an unequivocal answer. 'It's ME!' his fighting second place in the MotoGP race ahead of his 20-year-old team-mate screamed to the world. This was great for
MotoGP, the spectacle of the 29-year-old legend finally getting on terms with his new
Bridgestone tyres, after he had suffered a lacklustre fifth place in the opening round at Qatar.
It means that the championship has become a four-way battle - for a few races at least - after the Casey Stoner/Ducati ritual bludgeoning of everyone else last year. But if Rossi has wrestled a workable package from the Bridgestones and his new pneumatic-valve Yamaha, so has the unobtrusive, almost-invisible
Dani Pedrosa on the Michelin-shod Repsol Honda.
Never did a man utter a more prescient phrase than Alberto Puig, who told
Crash.net yesterday, "You don't need a pneumatic-valve engine to win this championship." Pedrosa, aided by his impeccable style, has now emerged as the biggest threat this season to Stoner.
It never looked like Stoner was going to make the podium at Jerez, but an 11th place after two excursions into the gravel - and did you note that Australian dirt-track pedigree helping him to keep the Ducati upright? - was totally unexpected.
