1.58secs: The average winning margin in MotoGP.

The first six races of 2006 have been won by an average of just 1.58secs - marking the closest ever start to a four-stroke MotoGP season.

Of those six races, the closest finish was Marco Melandri's 0.2sec victory over fellow Honda rider Casey Stoner in Turkey, with Valentino Rossi's thrilling Mugello win - by 0.575secs - last time out in Italy the next nearest.

Rossi's other win, at round two in Qatar, was by 0.9secs (over Nicky Hayden), while the most commanding victory so far has been Loris Capirossi's 4.3secs winning margin over rookie Dani Pedrosa in the season-opening Spanish Grand Prix. All other races this year have been won by less than two seconds.

The average time covering the top three so far this season has been just 5.76secs, with the top six covered by 16secs and the top ten 32.29secs - all of which are also closer than at the same point in the four previous MotoGP seasons, held since 990cc four-strokes were first introduced in 2002.

Meanwhile, the fantastic fight for victory at Mugello meant it was easy to overlook the equally frantic five-rider battle for seventh. The group were lapping consistently within a second of the race leaders and at the finish there was less than 20 seconds covering the top eleven riders across the line.

That marked only the second time in the 57-year history of grand prix racing that less than 20 seconds has covered the top eleven finishers in the premier-class. The closest ever top eleven finish was at the 2000 500cc Australian Grand Prix, when the margin was just 15.939secs.