Moody Blues: Jerez and <I>that</I> incident.

In the latest of his exclusive columns for Crash.net, renowned Eurosport MotoGP commentator Toby Moody reveals more 'behind the scenes' news from Jerez - including his view of that last corner collision between Valentino Rossi and Sete Gibernau - which ultimately decided the winner of Sunday's season-opening Spanish Grand Prix...

Well, you cannot ask for a better way to start the championship than that then can you... The two pre-season favourites rub everyone else's noses in it by disappearing up the road to be miles ahead and prove that they are the only ones to be counted in the 2005 title chase as the others were nowhere.

And then on the last lap, a race that has already been won by Rossi and conceded by Gibernau, comes alive again when the leader outbrakes himself and throws away a six bike length lead. Gibernau seizes his chance to lead before Rossi chucks it up on the inside with a ballsy move in which he loses the front, has his leg flailing on the inside as he gets the thing back upright again.

But now Gibernau passes him back to lead into the final corner. The race is his for the taking, but he leaves a little too much of the door open by moving a bit too much to the right. Rossi needs no second ask, leaving his braking so late that he has to bang off the already turning in Gibernau for the final left.

Rossi is on the inside and can only get pushed back towards the inside of the track as Gibernau goes off into the gravel. Rossi wins as Gibernau luckily gets over the line before the next bloke up, Melandri.

That's the simple way of putting it.

On the positive side of things, no one lost a massive haul of points because of the last corner clash and ultimately the championship is not going to have a different result because of it.

What so very nearly happened was Gibernau scoring zero points just as Alex Criville did in 1996 as he attempted to regain the lead from Mick Doohan after the crowd on the track disrupted Criville's lead on the final blast through the stadium area. At least the pair of them didn't touch back then. Criville fell off on his own.

In my view it was a racing incident between the two big hitters of the past two seasons. What was Valentino going to do? Stay behind and follow Gibernau home? No, I think not either. Rossi barged his way through at Assen last year but that's what racing is about. It was a very hard, but fair manoeuvre.

What would have been unfair would have been Gibernau not scoring his 20 points as that would be an unjust reward for a weekend's work.

Many were calling for a punishment on Rossi, but it fell on deaf ears to those upstairs in Race Control, and quite rightly too. It was not a Capirossi/Harada Argentina 1998 fair and square hit the other guy and knock him off pass.

The recollection of Tamada at Motegi 2003 being punished for a lesser incident does not have a bearing on this Rossi/Gibernau clash, as the decision to punish Tamada was just so stupid in the first place.

"You cannot fool the crowd," said Gibernau afterwards. "You have to feel sorry for them." Morals may well have been with Gibernau in front of his own crowd, who booed Rossi and chanted him as a son of a wh*re when he was on the podium, but to be fair to Gibernau, he kept most of his cool and refused to talk about it after the race.

In my book Rossi missed a trick by not humouring Gibernau by holding his hands up in Parc Ferme and saying sorry. Whether he meant it or not wouldn't have mattered, but for Rossi to carry on laughing with his mates in parc ferme as if nothing untoward had happened was a little silly really.

For Rossi to hold an outstretched hand wouldn't have made them meet in the middle, but it would have made them a least a little closer before next weekend in Portugal.

Just what a shame that it was a messy last corner and not a 'clean' pass that won Rossi the race, but it isn't flower arranging in the village hall, this is big boy stuff.

What is worrying is that with the worldwide popularity of Rossi and the sheer numbers of people preaching whatever he does, the next generation of riders are going to think that banging off people is an acceptable thing to do.

If it continues, it is not good for the sport as someone will get really hurt or we'll end up as Touring Cars have; a skill-less demolition derby. MotoGP is fortunately a long way from that, but we don't want to go there.

Melandri will be annoyed with all of the press in that the focus of the reports will be over the last corner incident. Jumping on a new bike and getting a podium first time out is brilliant for the little guy who just couldn't wait to get out of the second hand Yamaha garage of last year.

Dorna have implemented new timings into the Sunday schedule of 2005 with the 125 and 250 races starting 15 minutes earlier in order to leave time for the main 'TV immovable 1400hrs slot of MotoGP'. This is correct and the way forward for the sport. MotoGP is King, just as TV is king for the sponsors and the sport as a whole.

No TV, no sponsors - just as in Club racing. However, standing around in Parc Ferme watching riders chatting to their mates needs to be speeded up. Get them upstairs and onto the podium so that Gibernau could have potentially had a slanging match with Rossi up there instead. Now that would have been entertainment...!

So no-one ran out of fuel and the rules seem to have not slowed the bikes down. Tyre development has given them 80% of their extra speed over the winter, with bikes the rest.

Interesting to see that an onboard shot from Rossi's bike looking forward at Gibernau's Honda showed that on the over-run into the penultimate corner with about 5 laps to go that the Honda was spitting flame.

Ducati did not use their mysterious semi-auto clutch that disengages the engine during downchanges into a slow corner after a long straight. The fly-by-wire bike didn't run out of juice, but was a way back.

Statistics can be boring, but how about this one: The race at Jerez two years ago was the last dry race for the MotoGP bikes at the venue. The 2005 race was 67 seconds (in 45-minutes) faster than the 2003 edition. That is hideously rapid bike development.

We have to go quite a way back to find as big a gap from the leaders to 4th position in a DRY race such was the dominance of Rossi and Gibernau on Sunday. South Africa in 2002 saw 26.9-seconds from Rossi's winning V5 four-stroke to fourth placed man Kato, whose 500cc two-stroke was hardly in the same game... Rossi and Gibernau have just shown how much they are ahead of the rest.

Ship to shore radios have been allowed in MotoGP for a while now, but still only one team uses it. But just because Team Roberts got themselves organised and use it to good effect, other teams are reportedly complaining about radio usage... because they haven't organised it themselves?

Roberts are also well ahead of the game with weather prediction. A radar spinning around atop of the team truck was looking to separate rain clouds out from big black clouds.

Saving on cold starts is also a game that Roberts a way ahead on. The simple and well used process (elsewhere in motorsport) of pumping hot water through the cooling system before starting the engine heats the block up to 50-60 degrees.

The hot water also heats the cylinder head and so keeps the whole unit at the same temperature before firing. Engine wear from a cold start is tortuous in any engine providing 95% of engine wear in the first two minutes. Full marks to them for being up on logical matters.

Red Bull Boss Dietrich Mateschitz was at Jerez having a look around with Gerhard Berger weighing up the pros and cons of the sport once more. Red Bull were sponsors of the Red Bull Yamaha team from mid-'97 to the end of 2002 and now continue to spread their efforts between many with either assistant team sponsorship or sponsorship of riders' drinks bottles.

It is surprising that they are not involved with Rossi, but obviously the Nastro Azzuro deal that he has pays more... With Red Bull involved at fellow Austrian company KTM, following everything they do from Dakar to 125cc GP, a potential deal with Team Roberts would not have been helped by the MotoGP KTM V4 engine going wrong after three laps.

Valentino Rossi was 16-minutes late for the compulsory riders' briefing on Thursday and was nearly 4-minutes late for the Thursday Pre-event press conference. Rossi is almost always late for these events, something that is actually just plain rude towards everyone else who bothers to organise themselves.

Formula One has many things wrong at the moment, but one of the things that the FIA have got right is anyone arriving late for an F1 or WRC Press Conference, or F1 Sunday morning Drivers' Briefing. They are fined $5,000. Senna was once late for a F1 press conference and was promptly fined. He was never late ever again. Dorna needs to start implementing such measures to ensure the continuing professionalism of the championship...

A top team manager had a fright on Wednesday. He paid his taxi driver outside Bologna airport and entered the building only to discover he had left his mobile phone on the back seat. Fortunately he rang his own number from a colleague's mobile and the considerate taxi driver returned to the airport building much to the relief of the amiable Italian.

Shinichi Itoh has had a busy time of late. Barcelona test, then back home to Japan to test the Fireblade Superbike for 600 miles in two different venues, then back for the Estoril test for Ducati, then back to Japan the next weekend for the opening round of the All-Japan championship - which he won!

Many teams and spectators are rueing lost deposits on Rio flights and hotel rooms - after the late, but understandable, change in location for the second race after Rio - were reportedly slow in forthcoming of financial renumeration to Grand Prix rights holders Dorna.

For all its fun, Rio was actually a very expensive race to get to, and the lack of another 'flyaway' race may aid some teams financially. However, Turkey - to be held the weekend after Australia - is being treated by some as a flyaway race too, although others aim to have trucks present to meet the flight cases.