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O ne week to the day after Italy celebrated its World Cup victory in Germany, there was another reason to rejoice - the incompa- rable Valentino Rossi had pulled a rabbit out of the hat. Italy's favored son Rossi pulled off a remarkable change of fortune a day after speculating that his championship run might have ended. Overnight, the techni- cal team, led by Jeremy Burgess, trans- formed an unridable M1 into a race win- ner. The win was Rossi's fourth of the 2006 MotoGP season, and this time it came in front of 93,748 sunbaked fans sit- ting on the hills lining the Sachsenring to watch a memorable German Grand Prix. "We are struggling too much in the practice and yesterday night was the first time in two years and a half I start having some doubts about my M1," said Rossi, who'd qualified a downfield 11th. "And I need to say sorry, because it's not real." To prove his sincerity, he'd hugged the windscreen of the yellow and blue Yamaha on the cool-down lap. Rossi was expected to join the leaders and he did. He made short work of his midpack grid partners to quickly march to the front. When the battle began in earnest, on the ninth of 30 laps, there were three championship contenders and one very fast Marco Melandri mixing it up. Points leader Nicky Hayden was leading Melandri - he'd led from near the end of the first lap - with his teammate Dani Pedrosa in Rossi's sights. The order was shuffled on the 11th lap when Hayden started to push the front. In an instant he went from first to fourth, with Melandri taking the point from Pedrosa and Rossi. Then it was Rossi's turn, on lap 13, and for most of the race. Melandri made a pass on lap 28, in the first turn, with Rossi retaliating the next lap in turn 13, the hard-braking left at the bottom of the back straight. Melandri was hoping to counterpunch in the same corner on the final lap. But Rossi braked deep and took a tight line, forcing Melandri to take the long way around in the final left-hander before the finish stripe. Melandri nosed slightly ahead, but Rossi had the line, the drive and the win - by .145 of a second. "All the guys in the front are fighting for this victory, so it is an important victory for the championship also, for sure," Rossi said after wearing the jersey of Italian World Cup star Marco Materazzi onto the podium. Melandri pronounced himself at full fit- ness, even though six days earlier his doc- tor had found a previously undiscovered break in his right collarbone, a legacy of the turn-one crash in Catalunya. "In Donington I made a mistake and I give a present to Valentino [Rossi] and I say maybe he can give me back to me today, but he never give some present to somebody else," Melandri joked. "I'm so happy because it's a good time for me. So I recover quite completely the condition and the collarbone was okay today." Following Melandri came Repsol team- mates Hayden and Dani Pedrosa. Hayden's leathers were battle-scarred by Pedrosa's front tire, with marks up his side to his shoulder. It was on the 26th of 30 laps that Hayden made the final pass. There was hope of a victory, but it didn't materialize because of how the Rossi- Melandri fight transpired. Hayden was surprised by Melandri's last- lap strategy, thinking he might have tried an earlier move, "and I was wanting to be all over them right there and slip through and steal one," he said. "The bottom line is I did- n't come through and get it done." Yet he'll arrive in Monterey for the Red Bull U.S. GP with the same point's cushion he had when he arrived in Germany - 26. Only now it's over Rossi, 169-143, and not Pedrosa, who slipped to third with 140. "I think in the beginning of the year when I was leading the points everybody thought it was just a fluke the first few races, but I think now I definitely got a team that's for real," he said, along with a home-field advantage for Laguna Seca. "I've got a lot bigger battle than trying to win just Laguna, where last year I went there with nothing to lose. But I'm quite excited about it. I want to be leading the points at the end of the year." Marlboro Ducati's Loris Capirossi ran with the leaders until losing touch around midrace. Capirossi, the first of four Bridgestone runners, blamed his rear tire. "I chose a very hard front tire, so I did- n't push too hard during the first few laps, but I could stay with the leading group quite easily," he said after finishing 8.7 sec- onds behind Rossi. "Then, from half-dis- tance, the rear-tire performance dropped off every lap, so I ended up defending my position from [Shinya] Nakano." Kawasaki's Nakano was a steady sixth until the final laps when he cut into Capirossi's advantage, eventually finishing just .4 of a second back. "At the end I thought I would be able to catch Loris for fifth place, but by the time I was close enough to think about a pass, the race was over," the Japanese rider said. Rizla Suzuki's Chris Vermeulen spent the weekend learning yet another new racetrack. For his efforts he was rewarded with a seventh-place finish. The Australian fended off teammate John Hopkins for much of the race until Hopkins faded at the end, dropping to 10th. Hopkins explained that it was midrace before he started turning decent lap times and two laps from the end he was passed by Ducati Marlboro's Sete Gibernau, who ended up eighth, and Tech 3 Yamaha's Carlos Checa, the Spaniard finishing ninth. "At the end of the day, I'm pretty pissed off about it, but at the end of the day I've only finished - this is the second race I've ever finished here in five or six races or whatever," he said. "Normally I'm walking away from here in an ambu- lance with broken bones. At the end of the day we scored some points." Fortuna Honda's Toni Elias had a less than successful return to racing. The Spaniard was back for the first time since breaking his left shoulder in an Assen- practice crash. "From lap eight I really began to feel the pain and the only way to cope was to ride hard in bursts," he said after finishing 11th. Twelfth went to Camel Yamaha's Colin Edwards, who'd qualified 15th. "The first few laps were okay, but I struggled to pass Toni Elias and by the time I got past him we were way back," he said. "From there on it was just a bat- tle to keep the bike on the track and there wasn't much more I could do but bring it home." The final two finishers were Tech 3 Yamaha's James Ellison and Pramac d'Antin MotoGP's Jose Luis Cardoso. There were four non-finishers and one controversial non-starter. Honda LCR's Casey Stoner was prevented from racing after crashing in the morning warmup. Stoner was transported to the nearby Chemnitz Hospital, where he was cleared of injury. But Dr. Jorg-Uwe Fischer, the track's Chief Medical Officer, refused to allow Stoner to take part, a move which angered both Stoner and team boss Lucio Cecchinello. "After almost 20 years in racing I still do not understand the inflexible approach of the chief circuit doctor, although he does have the final say," Cecchinello said. "Casey never lost consciousness in the crash and he was cleared of any problems by the hospital scan." Sachsenring Circuit Sachsenring, Germany Round 10 July 16, 2006 JULY 26, 2006 • C Y C L E N E W S 16 World Championship Road Race Series BY HENNY RAY ABRAMS PHOTOS BY GOLD & GOOSE Valentino Rossi (46) leads Marco Melandri (33), Nicky Hayden (69) and Dani Pedrosa (hidden) during the final frantic laps of the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring.