Toseland came into the penultimate round with a 41 point lead, extended that to 44 in race one at the Italian circuit, but then saw all his hard work undone by a costly fall.
An accident in Superpole had already forced the Hannspree Ten Kate Honda team to rebuild Toseland's number one machine, but the traction control system was faulty in race one - when an aggressive Toseland nevertheless pushed aside title rival
Noriyuki Haga for a hard fought third position - and was again causing problems in race two.
But it was front end traction that proved Toseland's undoing - the Englishman losing the front of his CBR1000RR at the slowest corner on the track while defending fourth place from
Troy Corser. Toseland immediately jumped to his feet after the incident and eventually brought the damaged machine home in eleventh position.
The good news for Toseland was that
Troy Bayliss prevented new nearest title rival Max Biaggi claiming a double victory on Sunday, meaning that the Roman will start next Sunday's showdown 29 points behind JT, with Haga having dropped to third in the championship - a further four points behind.
"The guys made a great job of rebuilding my number one bike after the Superpole crash and I chose to ride it. This was my decision and maybe it wasn't the best decision because we struggled to get the traction control working," admitted Toseland. "There was no improvement from race one to race two and race one was bad enough - definitely the hardest of the season so far. Having said all that, we've come out of today with a 29 point advantage. If someone had told me at the start of the season that that would the case I'd have been happy with that so it's not that bad."
