Five laps into the 22-lap Chinese Grand Prix at the 5.451-mile, 16-turn Shanghai Circuit Fiat Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi passed Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa and rode on to his first victory since Estoril, Portugal in 2007 (seven months ago!). The victory made Rossi the fourth rider to win a Grand Prix in the still very young 2008 MotoGP World Championship season. Tech 3 Yamaha rider Colin Edwards shadowed the duo for another lap before smoking the turn at the end of Shanghai’s high-speed backstretch. From there is was purely the Rossi and Pedrosa show, Rossi then turning it up a notch in the last four laps to win by 3.890 seconds over Pedrosa. Ducati Marlboro’s Casey Stoner placed third, albeit 12 seconds adrift of Pedrosa!

“I’m disappointed to be honest because I know we could have done better today,” lamented the reigning World Champion afterwards. “The bike has worked really well in practice and we thought we had the ideal set-up for today but we changed a couple of things and for one reason or another the package just wasn’t as good as before. I made a good start and I was happy with that but even in the first corner I couldn’t get the bike turned, Colin Edwards came past me, and that was the story of the race. As the race wore on my lap times improved but it was too little too late and in any case it wouldn’t have been enough for me to stick with the lead guys. I’m disappointed this has happened today - not so really for third place which is a good result but for the big gap from the lead. I know we can do much better so we will put this behind us, wipe the slate clean and try to do better next time out.”

Despite competing with a broken right ankle, Fiat Yamaha sensation Jorge Lorenzo raced to fourth overall, the intrepid Spaniard riding a steady, methodical race, whizzing by Ducati Marlboro’s Marco Melandri on lap number 15. He would finish fourth overall, ahead of Melandri. His World Championship hopes put is serious peril in a practice crash, Lorenzo kept damage to a minimum in China, leaving Shanghai only seven points behind leader Pedrosa (81 points to 74 points). Americans Nicky Hayden and Colin Edwards finished sixth an seventh, respectively, in the GP. Alice Team’s Toni Elias was seventh and Rizla Suzuki’s Loris Capirossi was eighth on the day.