by Nico Cereghini

We expected great things from Corsi and Iannone in Moto2 and, in fact, everything appeared to be going well for Simone Corsi who took a great pole position at Aragon. In the race however, after an excellent start, he only managed to cross the line in seventh even if only 4 seconds behind the winner. Andrea Iannone came home fourth, eight hundredths of a second off the podium. It was a shame for the Italian riders, almost ironic after having been the absolute stars and the honour went to the two Spaniards who have been dominating the 2012 World Championship Series. This time Pol Espargaro beat Marquez who slightly slowed because of the duel between Redding (third) and Iannone. Pol rode brilliantly even though his bike was slower than his rival's that was the fastest down the long straights in Aragon. Espargaro certainly deserved this third win of the season but Marc has won seven of them... Corti who was very good in practice came home ninth.

Round 14 of the Series was hampered by the bad weather that plagued the first two days. The skies finally cleared on the Sunday morning but the low temperature penalised those who had been unable to find the right setting. In the MotoGP event, Jorge Lorenzo did what he could to limit the damage but couldn't keep up with Dani Pedrosa who was riding a perfectly set up RCV. At the moment the Honda is superior and Pedrosa is still in a good shape Dovi was third for the sixth time this year following a spectacular battle with his team mate who finished fourth ahead of an unhopeful Ben Spies. Stefan Bradl unfortunately fell when he was in a superb third position while Nicky Hayden was already out of the race after a big crash: on the fourth lap he hit the barrier after recovering from a slide. Fortunately the American Ducati rider wasn't hurt but the way he flew over the wall was alarming and, as Uncini later admitted, perhaps the barriers need to be looked at to improve safety.

Rossi's race was doomed from the first lap. He was ninth and was passing Rea when the English rider moved to the outside of the track to take his line. Vale admitted the mistake. He should have attacked from the other side but instead ran wide to avoid the impact and came back on to the track in twentieth place. He fought his way back up to eighth place but it was by no means the result it could have been. Both Yamaha and Honda have recently carried out tests on this track with very promising results. A little like what happened at Misano but there the advantage was with Ducati. “As for getting back on to the podium, let's see what happens at Motegi" said Valentino in a post race interview, "I like the track and the grip there is ideal for my bike”.

In Moto3, Vinales dropped out during the warm up lap with mechanical problems. The race was an epic event with thirteen riders in single file fighting for the win and podium places. Luis Salom had a fantastic day and beat Sandro Cortese again as well as a very feisty Jonas Folger. Salom is the true revelation of this second half of the season. In the last four rounds he has collected ninety points, two wins and two seconds, better than anyone else. Again at Aragon he displayed both class and clear thinking. He now lies second in the class standings 51 points behind the almost crowned champion Cortese. Romano Fenati went out with mechanical problems when he was up with the leaders, Antonelli finished tenth and Tonucci came home twelfth.

by Nico Cereghini

The transfer to Germany was not without problems: the appalling weather affected nearly all the practice sessions, made work on the bikes very complicated and, as a result, very few of the riders had their machines set up as they would have liked. The Honda HRCs were the exception to the rule. What a lesson for Yamaha! Lorenzo finished second, 15 seconds behind the winner Pedrosa and the Yamaha team will no doubt be asking questions about what the unexpected lesson means. Dani Pedrosa had his sights set on Stoner who led from the second to the eighteenth lap and who had every appearance of repeating his win at Assen. Instead, the Spanish rider refused to let his team mate pull away then launched an attack on lap nineteen and took the lead. The pair continued to fight until, with the chequered flag in sight, Casey made a final attempt to take control of the race and fell: The Australian was out of it. Now Jorge Lorenzo unexpectedly leads the MotoGP standings with a lead of 14 points over Pedrosa and 20 on Stoner.

Behind the leaders, the ever-consistent Andrea Dovizioso was happy to show his rivals the rear of his leathers: those with this view were Ben Spies, an excellent Stefan Bradl and Valentino Rossi right behind him in sixth position and only eight seconds off the podium. Hayden finished tenth and Petrucci seventeenth. Pasini was an early faller and Pirro went out with mechanical problems. The Ducatis appeared to be in fairly good shape and also to be making progress in the dry. Rossi prevailed on his team mates by fighting with Bradl on a level par. Do the results from Sachsenring really reflect the true situation or were they just the outcome of a somewhat unusual GP for the reasons stated above? We'll certainly find out more at Mugello.

Marc Marquez delivered a peerless performance to win in Moto2 with Pol Espargaro forced to start from far back on the grid following disastrous qualifying. Andrea Iannone was up with the front runners but unfortunately lost the front end and went into the gravel. He was able to rejoin the race but finished out of the points. Alex De Angelis put up a great fight with the Spanish rider but was passed by Kallio and finished in third place on the podium. Pol managed to come home in fourth place, the result of a magnificent come back from a lowly position on the grid. He is now second in the standings, 43 points behind the leader Marquez who has already won four races out of eight. Luthi came home fifth with Simone Corsi behind him.

The Moto3 race rounded off the day. The start was delayed due to a downpour and run in the wet. Cortese won the race while Viñalles had a disastrous race, as did Fenati. Masbou came home second with Salom in third. Niccolò Antonelli, again the best of the Italian riders, finished in a lowly twelfth position. The results from the Italian riders are very different from what we expected following the first few races of 2012. Let's hope that we can put things right at Mugello.

by Nico Cereghini

Valentino's best race of 2012 coincided with Ducati's worst overall performance as the competition builds its lead with every race. Since last year, both Honda and Yamaha are now over 20 seconds quicker over full race length while the Desmosedici appears to be making little progress. Rossi finished seventh, 26 seconds behind the winner Stoner and four places ahead of his team mate Nicky Hayden who was plagued by electronic problems and finished 1 minute behind the race winner. Since the practice sessions were finally not bothered by the weather conditions, the nine times world champion managed to find a better setting and therefore make a good start. In its present condition however, the Ducati doesn't allow for much more with the gap at nearly 1 second per lap. All hopes of closing the distance between the Hondas and Yamahas now lie in the new solutions the team tested on Monday in Estoril.

Looking at just the data, the third round of the world championship may have appeared dull with Casey securing first position before the third corner and staying there until the chequered flag. In reality though it was a very fast, hard-fought race with the three main contenders lapping faster than they did in practice. By the half way stage, Lorenzo had caught up with Stoner and seemed to be in the hunt but the Australian managed to pull away in the last few laps to leave the Spaniard 1.4 seconds behind. Pedrosa in third was fast but too far behind the leaders to be in with a chance of a win. Stoner now leads the championship with Lorenzo just 1 point behind.

Dovizioso finished in a good fourth position ahead of his team mate, at last, and Bautista came home sixth, ahead of Valentino. Stefan Bradl from Germany had a good race where both his competitive nature and natural style were on full display as he fought with Rossi and Spies only to lose out to the Texan at the finishing line. General opinion is that the 2011 Moto2 champion has all that it takes to get to the top and he is making progress in leaps and bounds. Mattia Pasini was unlucky to crash out on the sixteenth lap and Danilo Petrucci scored 1 point in fifteenth place behind Pirro. Petrucci certainly didn't deserve the embarrassment of being lapped by the leaders but his Ioda is slow and the straights at Estoril are too long.

In Moto2, we saw Pol Espargaro riding aggressively as he tried everything, especially in the last lap, to take the lead from his fellow countryman Marquez. The rivalry between them is becoming more intense and public opinion is split. We have the style and cunning of Marc against the pluck and courage of Pol. On the last lap, Espargaro ran deep at the hairpin and was able to recover but he had to slow down and cruised to the flag in front of Luthi, Zarco and Iannone in that order. It was a shame for Andrea who, until half way, was up among the front-runners. Iannone was unlucky to go off the track and fell back into seventh place after which he made a tremendous fight-back to catch Zarco who was fourth. Had there been one more lap, he would have passed him with ease. Simone Corsi too was unlucky after falling seven laps from the finish when he was in ninth place and making good progress.

No champagne for Romano Fenati in Moto3. Although the rider from Ascoli started from the second row of the grid, he didn't make a great start and even though his FTR Honda wasn't among the fastest down the straights, he performed miracles. At the half way stage, he appeared to be back in the race until a run in with Faubel dropped him to eleventh place and unfortunately, during yet another comeback, he came off again. A shame but no doubt Romano will make up for it next time. In the meantime we saw a rejuvenated Niccolò Antonelli; the Team Gresini rider rode superbly to finish sixth in the slipstream of Vazquez. Luis Salom put in a brilliant lap to finish on the podium in third place after a spectacular duel with Khairuddin, the real surprise of the race, who finished fourth. Alessandro Tonucci finished in eighteenth place ahead of Schroetter, Luigi Morciano finished twenty-fourth and Danny Webb was forced to retire with an engine stoppage. It all kicks off again in France in a fortnight on 20 May at the Le Mans Bugatti circuit.