<I>Crash.net's</I> Qatar GP blog: Sunday

Monday am - Toseland Bounces into the New Job

"I could have picked another manufacturer to scrape off!" James Toseland was hanging out in the paddock tonight, just walking around in a happy haze and chatting to whoever wanted to go over with him his amazing debut ride in MotoGP.

It was that second-lap fairing bashing incident with fellow Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo that announced to the world that Toseland was here to race from the start, not putter round apologetically for a few rounds to test out the temperature in this big new world of MotoGP.

Slamming into Lorenzo, Yamaha's prize 20-year-old hope for the future, was not the most subtle thing to do, and the Superbike graduate was quick to accept responsibility for the incident.

"It was just a lack of experience on my part, really, not having ridden against these guys," Toseland admitted. "I thought the door was open and the gap was a bit wider than it was. But he came back across me and we came together a bit too close."

Toseland got his Tech 3 bike up to second place at one stage early in the race, before being knocked back to sixth and tailing the scrap between Andrea Dovizioso's JiR Team Scot Honda and Valentino Rossi's Fiat Yamaha.

Did he feel a bit apprehensive about the possibility of having a go at the seven-times world champion?

"No, not at all," he said. "I was just doing what I do, and I was pushing as hard as I could. In most corners they were trying to overtake each other, so there were two bikes in front of me, and it made it impossible to pass them."

Now the Tech 3 squad will look forward to getting Yamaha's more powerful pneumatic-valve engine, probably for the third round of the championship in Portugal, when podiums will become a real possibility.

Sunday pm - Redding Emerges as Next Brit Thing

They were saying in the MotoGP paddock late last year that Scott Redding was going to be the next biggest thing to come through since Bradley Smith, and the 15-year-old boy from Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, proved it tonight with his amazing ride in the 125cc race.

In his first world championship event, competing against riders with up to 140 grands prix under their wheels, Redding climbed to third place on his Blusens Aprilia, and set the fastest lap before eventually finishing fifth.

He thus became the youngest rider ever to finish in the top five of a grand prix race. He had already created history by becoming the youngest ever rider to start from the front row of a grand prix after qualifying in fourth place.

"I had a bad start, but I managed to pull back and a few people crashed and helped me to pick up places," he said, displaying a racer's ruthless mentality at a splendidly early age.

"I expected to finish about tenth or 11th, and when I saw that I had got up to third I thought, 'This isn't supposed to happen!'

"But I learnt a few things in the Spanish championship last year about holding a line. I wasn't pushing full on tonight, I was just holding my line, and now I've learnt something else from this race."

Redding won the last three races of the Spanish championship in 2007 and finished second in the series. His father Adrian was in Qatar to see his son battle it out fearlessly with the kings of the razor-fine 125cc class.

Sunday pm - Broken Steering Damper Costs Bradley His Chance

A simple broken steering damper robbed Bradley Smith of the chance to become Britain's first 125cc grand prix winner in 35 years at Losail here tonight.

The problem struck after he had led the first lap on his Polaris World Aprilia. But then the bike wobbled violently, and he dropped back to finish in 16th place, nearly 25 seconds behind winner Sergio Gadea on the Bancaja Aspar Aprilia.

"The damper came off at the mounting point on the frame," Bradley said as he watched the subsequent 250cc race in the Polaris World pitbox.

"It changed the handling completely, because there was no stability at the front - it was free to do what it wanted. It made the bike really difficult to control, and you could crash if you ride without a steering damper. But I have to keep going to the very end."

It was a heart-breaking finish to a weekend which had seen the 17-year-old become the first Briton to claim pole position in the 125cc class for 36 years, since Chas Mortimer in 1972.

In the race warm-up his number one bike had already failed to run with an engine problem, and he had had to swap to his spare machine.

Sunday pm - Lorenzo and Toseland Quickest Through the Corners

Jorge Lorenzo and James Toseland, MotoGP's sensational newcomers, will approach tonight's race with the confidence of knowing that each of them was the fastest rider through two of the Losail circuit's four timed sectors during qualifying.

Toseland, on the Tech 3 Yamaha with the conventional valve-spring engine, was quickest through sectors one and two on the 16-turn, 3.34-mile circuit, even though his bike clearly lacks power compared to most of his rivals. On his best qualifying lap he cut through the first sector in 24.849 seconds, just 23 hundredths of a second better than Lorenzo, on the latest pneumatic-valve Fiat Yamaha. In sector two Toseland bettered Lorenzo by 0.109 seconds.

Lorenzo was able to get through sector three quickest, his 27.981 seconds beating Casey Stoner on the Marlboro Ducati by 0.215 seconds. Lorenzo also muscled fastest through sector four, which leads onto the power-sucking main straight, recording 31.578 seconds, just sixteen hundredths quicker than Stoner in second place.

This was, of course, on Michelin qualifying rubber and not the harder tyres that bikes will be wearing for the race. But the illustration shows how riders literally are competing to shave hundredths of a second from lap times in this era of 800cc bikes.

And it also poses the question: what might Toseland have done if he'd had the lustier pneumatic-valve Yamaha motor?

Sunday pm - What to Look for in Today's Race

So what can we look forward to in this debut night MotoGP race, after Jorge Lorenzo, James Toseland and Colin Edwards produced the first all-Yamaha front row since the senior class went to three-rider rows in 2004?

In the first place, the Yamaha quartet - Valentino Rossi languishes on the third row, seventh fastest, on his Bridgestone-equipped bike - will need to make scorching starts to have any hope of holding off Casey Stoner on the Marlboro Ducati GP8 night-express down the straight.

In theory, all Stoner has to do to use his renowned mental steel, and the Ducati's 5-10mph speed advantage, to club the Yamahas down one by one until he tops the podium after 22 laps of the 3.34-mile Losail circuit.

But can Bridgestone match Michelin's race-tyre grip? The Bridgestones were superior last year, but after their rivals' winter rebound - maybe beleaguered French president Nicolas Sarkozy should take strategy classes from Michelin race chief Jean-Philippe Weber - the situation is much less clear.

At least the Bridgestones seem to grip right from the green light, which is what Rossi is counting on in his preferred tactic of whacking straight through from the third row while the Michelin lads may be doing a bit of cautious teetering on the first lap or two.

If you had to place bets, you'd probably go for Stoner or Lorenzo, after the latter's sensational pole in his first MotoGP race at only 20 years of age. But as we have been reminded yet again in the past two nights of practice and qualifying at Qatar, anything can happen in MotoGP.

The Tech 3 riders Toseland and Edwards, on their under-powered valve-spring engines, certainly have a great chance of standing on the podium - and maybe even on the highest step.