Picture: Biaggi's team grid cleaning?

This picture appears to show a member of Max Biaggi's Camel Honda team cleaning the Roman's grid slot late on Friday night, in preparation for Saturday's Qatar Grand Prix.

Although the picture is 'murky', the grid slot being brushed, and apparently washed, is on the right hand side of the track - consistent with Biaggi's original twelfth placed starting position.

Max, along with Valentino Rossi - whose Yamaha team prepared his eighth place by using a scooter to put rubber down - would both be dropped to the back of Saturday's grid (middle pic) as a result of such 'illegal' cleaning.

Camel Honda team principal Sito Pons later admitted that his team had cleaned Biaggi's grid slot, but claimed it was standard practice at a new track and was purely for safety purposes.

"Max started this race from the back of the grid for a penalty which I feel was too severe," said Sito. "The team has done what you do to a new track and where the presence of sand was more than evident.

"To clean the position where the rider is starting from is a process which is simply for the safety of the rider at the start, a preventative measure which the organisation should have dealt with especially in the area of the starting grid," he explained.

"I repeat, our intervention was only trying to guarantee the safety of the rider on the track."

However, presuming the picture is of a Camel Honda team member - and if not, then another team should also have been penalized - the grid cleaning clearly took place late at night (as did Rossi's) implying some effort to keep it secret.

It is also unknown if Pons, or any other teams, asked for the whole grid to be swept by the organisers before the race... surely the only way to clear the dust without protests from rival teams.

Meanwhile, Camel Honda also felt that there was an element of 'revenge' involved in their penalty - Honda first lodged a protested against Rossi's Gauloises Yamaha team and, when the #46 was subsequently penalized, the factory Yamaha team then protested against Biaggi. Ducati are thought to have protested against both.

"I started in last place, because of the penalty put upon my team. What can I say about that... It was the result of a complaint made by our rivals," confirmed Max. "Whatever, for the third race in a row things were tough from the start."

With a six-second penalty added to their qualifying times, Rossi and Biaggi would start from 21st and 22nd respectively. Rossi would charge through the field at a frightening pace, but crash out on lap 6, while Biaggi made more gradual progress.

"I wasn't disheartened, not even when I got an awful start, with the rear tyre slipping on the sand, which was present in industrial proportions down there at the back," continued Max, before explaining why Rossi accelerated away much better: "Rossi was in the middle line of the straight, the cleanest bit, and he got a great start.

"I tried not to lose my desire and I got down to business. It was tough, very tough, because the (racing line) we had to work in was tight. But I wanted to get as far up the order as possible."

Biaggi was just 18th at the end of the first lap, but then made up between one and four places with each and every lap until he caught sixth placed Nicky Hayden, on lap 6 of 22.

Max would overtake the factory Honda rider 4 laps later, and was then promoted to fifth when Marco Melandri broke down ahead of him, but by lap 15 Hayden's team-mate Alex Barros had caught the pair and would pass Biaggi on lap 17.

With Carlos Checa having retired from third with just 3 laps to go, the Barros, Biaggi and Hayden battle was now over fourth place - but a mistake by Max on the very last lap would allow Hayden back through and he would cross the line sixth.

"On the last lap I got on Barros' tail to try and snatch fourth place, but my front let me down, and the steering folded and I went straight on," he revealed. "Hayden also profited from it, but I don't regret having tried it.

"All that's happened over the last three races has been practically unbelievable," concluded Max, who crashed on the first lap at Estoril and Motegi.

The Malaysian Grand Prix, at Sepang, takes place next weekend.