Sachsenring is one of the best circuits on the calendar for turning up surprises...and delivering great racing as well. It's a short lap, tight and technical, with drops and rises, never-ending sequences of bends and the a lovely main straight rather reminiscent of Sugo with the hill in the middle. Oh, and it's a left hand circuit as well. Just for the record, Saxony is also one of the nicest areas of Germany, with spectacular countryside and friendly people in what was until fairly recently part of East Germany. It's also the home of MZ - sadly they're no longer producing real bikes but there's always hope that they may come back - as well as the notorious Castle Colditz. Which is now a hotel. Strange but true.

Anyhow. In much the same way as his accident at Mugello dominated the news, so Valentino Rossi's return to racing, just six weeks later, was really all that anyone wanted to talk about in the run-up to the race weekend. Casey Stoner's confirmed departure from Ducati and return to Honda, this time as part of a rumoured three-bike factory team, raised barely a murmur. Even suggestions that Rossi would be leaving Yamaha and joining Ducati were drowned in the roar of approval as, on Thursday, Rossi confirmed that yes, the doctors had said he could ride this weekend. Now this could have gone either way. We've all seen racers return from injury too soon, mere shadows of their former selves, hobbling around the pit lane and frankly a liability on the track as their physical condition stopped them going fast enough while the pain and fear of aggravating things further messed with their heads. Then again, we're talking about Valentino Rossi here. It's not as if he needs the money - The Doctor could retire today and live his days in comfort even if he never made another penny. And he must recognise that his championship hopes are pretty well shot now, so he could have sat the season out and made sure he was really, really fit.

But he didn't.

First free practice, Rossi's first time back on a MotoGP bike, saw him finish seventh, two hundredths of a second behind championship leader Lorenzo and just three quarters of a second off Pedrosa, whose performance here is always impressive. And in the second free practice it got better yet, Rossi posting third fastest behind Lorenzo and Stoner, with Pedrosa behind him. Stoner, by the way, is riding more confidently and consistently, and finally seems to have got the Ducati working for him again. Just in time to leave the team - don't you just hate it when that happens? Someone else who seems to have things working pretty well is Ben Spies, fourth in the first session, the likeable Texan was seventh in the second, ahead of Nicky Hayden. Hayden and compatriot Colin Edwards, are both struggling at the moment, seemingly unable to get a setup that works and both of them are failing to live up to the promise of their early season successes. Hopefully things will turn around for two of the nicest guys on the grid.

Talking of nice guys on the grid and luck changing, Randy de Puniet has been having a fabulous season so far. This is is hundred and ninetieth GP start - he's never missed a race in fifteen years - and things finally seem to be coming together for the amiable Frenchman. At least they did until qualifying. There are some things that happen so rarely these days that we've almost forgotten them. One of those things is MotoGP engines blowing up. Another is MotoGP engines dropping their guts all over the track. And another is having a MotoGP engine catch fire. So having all three of these things happen to a factory machine is almost unheard of. But Jorge Lorenzo's Yamaha demonstrated that the key word there is "almost" as it let go in a big way about three quarters of the way down the main straight, dumping oil and water onto the track, on the racing line, at the beginning of the braking zone before catching fire and prompting Lorenzo's extremely hasty exit, stage left. Unfortunately, Ben Spies and Randy de Puniet were already coming down the straight, hitting something like a hundred and seventy miles an hour before braking for the sharp right hander at the end of the straight. Braking on a mixture of hot oil and water - probably the slipperiest combination you could ask for. Both crashed hard but the gravel trap is big and Sachsenring is a pretty safe place to get off. Usually. Unfortunately for de Puniet, physics dictates that a bike on a similar line and doing a similar speed to the one that crashed before it will end up in a similar place. As will the rider. And so it was this time, with the Frenchman striking Spies' bike on the way past. Fortunately it was only a glancing blow on the front fairing, but as de Puniet was probably still doing about fifty miles per hour at the time it was enough to severely bruise his right ankle and earn him a trip to Clinica Mobile where he sat out the rest of the session.

Lorenzo, equally innocent but the cause of the rapidly deployed red flags, legged it back to the pits and was able to continue on his second bike, as was Spies. All credit to the marshals, by the way, who stopped the session very quickly indeed and really can't be blamed for the crash as the gap between the blow-up and the next bikes arriving was really very small indeed.

The restarted session passed without incident. Unless you call Jorge Lorenzo taking his fourth pole position on the trot an incident, that is. The Spaniard beat Stoner by just twenty-four thousandths of a second after a nail-biting last few minutes that saw the lead swapping between Stoner, Pedrosa and Lorenzo. Pedrosa ended the session just a tenth behind Stoner, with his team-mate Dovizioso heading the second row from Valentino Rossi and Hector Barbera on the Pramac Ducati. Yes, I'm not entirely sure which surprised me the most - seeing Rossi qualify fifth on his return or seeing Barbera so far up. Rossi, by the way, was just over half a second off Lorenzo's pole time. Randy de Puniet's pre-crash time was good enough to put him at the head of the third row, ahead of Marco Simoncelli and Aleix Espargaro on the second Pramac bike. Marco Melandri, Mika Kallio and Colin Edwards made up the fourth row, with a slightly battered Spies heading row five from Capirossi and a strangely below par Nicky Hayden.

Race day looked as though things could get interesting. Because although there had been some rain earlier in the weekend, nobody really expected Sunday to be raining. But it was, and as a result the warm-up was a subdued affair with nobody really wanting to push it. Just to mess things up further, the sun came out afterwards and it looked as though the race was going to be dry. So any last minute adjustments and tweaks would go straight out of the window.

Lights out, then, and it was Dani Pedrosa who made his customary lightning start to take the lead by the first corner, but Jorge Lorenzo is a man on a mission and barged his way through to the lead before the lap was out. It's good to see that the old enmity between Lorenzo and Pedrosa seems to have petered out, perhaps as a result of neither of them being egged on by the media, so they can now race hard with the sort of mutual respect that keeps things safe. or as safe as possible, anyway. Dovizioso made a cracking start as well, slotting into third ahead of Casey Stoner while Hector Barbera completed the first lap in an astonishing fifth place, ahead of on form Simoncelli and recovering Valentino Rossi. Rossi had to fight past Nicky Hayden after a poor start but soon settled back down into a steady race pace.

It took a while, but Stoner got past Dovizioso at around the same time that Rossi passed Simoncelli, Barbera having shot his bolt and slipped back down the field to eighth after a brilliant opening lap that showed just how much potential the lad has. Colin Edwards crashed out on lap eight, his weekend just getting worse and worse, while Valentino Rossi managed to claw his way past Dovizioso at the beginning of lap ten. Unfortunately, at around the same time, some way behind Randy de Puniet was also rounding his horrible weekend off nicely. The Frenchman was going well in ninth after a bad start, and was pushing to make up lost ground when he highsided the LCR Honda and dumped himself in the middle of the track. It went downhill from there. The next rider around the corner, Mika Kallio, had nowhere to go and hit the unfortunate Frenchman, breaking his left tibia and fibula (the two bones in the lower leg) while next around was Aleix Espargaro who hit the stricken Honda instead and was fired over the top. Alvaro Bautista, hard behind Espargaro, didn't have the visibility so all he had time to do was get the Suzuki sat up before hitting the spinning Honda, killing it completely by setting fire to it as he too cartwheeled through the air. So with three bikes down, one injured rider and a small bonfire on the track the red flags came out.

Twenty five minutes later a highly depleted grid formed up, in positions corresponding to their track position at the end of the last complete lap run. That put Lorenzo on pole, followed by Pedrosa and Stoner. Counting back a lap put Dovizioso back in front of Rossi, with the champion followed by Nicky Hayden who had finally got the better of that pesky Simoncelli. The Gresini Honda rider headed row three from Hector Barbera and his team-mate Marco Melandri, while Capirossi, Kallio, Spies and de Angelis brought up the rear. Bautista and Espargaro failed to get themselves and their bikes back to the pits in time so were excluded from the restart. A good thing in the case of Espargaro, because a quick visit to the medical centre after the restart showed a fracture to his seventh cervical vertebra. Yes, the hard as nails Ducati rider was trying to race with a broken neck.

Lights out for the second time, and again Pedrosa made the running off the line. Again Lorenzo passed him in short order, but this time Pedrosa dug in hard and got back in front. Behind, Dovizioso had made a good start to slot into third, ahead of Stoner and Hayden while Rossi had given himself a mountain to climb in this shortened race after starting badly and finishing the first lap in sixth, over a second behind Pedrosa. Mika Kallio added to the Pramac team woes by crashing out, unhurt, at the first corner.

At the front a titanic battle was taking place as Pedrosa failed to break away from Lorenzo. It never really looked as though the Yamaha rider was going to get back in front, but it certainly never looked as though Pedrosa could relax either. Behind, Stoner regrouped and breezed past Dovizioso at the end of the straight on lap four, the Italian Honda rider responding but not being able to make his repass stick. And slightly further back, Rossi had fought his way past Nicky Hayden again and set off after the rapidly disappearing leaders. Though chasing them was an exercise in futility, two laps later we saw Rossi passing Dovizioso cleanly and with no opportunity for a defence, opening an immediate gap. But by now Pedrosa was three seconds ahead, and there were only fifteen laps left. Even Rossi would be pushed to do much with this. It looked for a while as though The Doctor was going to be riding a lonely race in a safe fourth place. But how foolish of us - this is Valentino Rossi we're talking about. Which is how, six laps later, the World Champion was under a third of a second behind Stoner and was gaining fast. Broken leg and all. Rossi is a prodigious talent, and today he really showed just how good he is. Eight laps of club race type scrapping with Stoner, the lead swapping at least half a dozen times and the result not being decided until the very last corner. No quarter given, or asked for, and certainly no consideration for a rider who couldn't possibly be considered fully fit.

Behind the astonishing fight for third, the battle for fifth was also a race long, tooth and nail affair between the privateer Honda mounted Simoncelli and factory riders Hayden and Dovizioso. Simoncelli was holding both off for a while until an enormous near highside pushed him wide and allowed them both to slip through. But the Simoncelli wasn't done yet, and continued to fight right through to the chequered flag.

As the race came to an end, Lorenzo showed a maturity beyond his years as he realised that he wasn't going to beat Pedrosa today and that second was still a good place to finish. Certainly far better than the Clinica Mobile. And it's worth bearing in mind that second is Lorenzo's worst finish of the season. As a result, Pedrosa crossed the line around three seconds clear in a well deserved textbook win. Two seconds behind Lorenzo, Stoner managed to mug Rossi on the final corner to take the last podium place in a truly epic battle that had me shouting at the TV in excitement. And a yawning twelve seconds further back, Dovizioso prevailed over Simoncelli and Hayden in the fight for fifth, the three ending up just three quarters of a second apart. Ben Spies rode to a somewhat lonely eighth with Hector Barbera ninth and Marco melandri rounding out the top ten.

So there we are. Earlier in the week we didn't even now if Rossi would be able to race. And here he was, scrapping like a teenager for the podium in a truly inspiring ding-dong battle. The man really, truly is The Greatest. And it's wonderful to have him back.

Next round is just a week away, at Laguna Seca. That should be exciting as it's been the scene of some genuinely awesome struggles, usually featuring Rossi. He'll be fitter by then, and out to prove a point I suspect. Anyone want to bet against him?

SB

German MotoGP Results

1. Dani Pedrosa (Honda)
2. Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha)
3. Casey Stoner (Ducati)
4. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)
5. Andrea Dovizioso (Honda)
6. Marco Simoncelli (Honda)
7. Nicky Hayden (Ducati)
8. Ben Spies (Yamaha)
9. Hector Barbera (Ducati)
10. Marco Melandri (Honda)

MotoGP standings (after eight rounds)

1. Jorge Lorenzo 185
2. Dani Pedrosa 138
3. Andrea Dovizioso 102
4. Casey Stoner 83
5. Nicky Hayden 78
6. Valentino Rossi 74
7. Randy de Puniet 69
8. Ben Spies 67
9. Marco Simoncelli 49
10. Marco Melandri 45