Volcanic ash caused the cancellation, or postponement, anyway, of the Japanese MotoGP round scheduled for last weekend. That's pretty impressive, seeing as Iceland, where said volcano was chucking out its noxious clouds, and Japan are almost directly opposite each othe ron the globe. Obviously there's no ash directly affecting Japan, but the restrictions on flying placed on much of Europe resulted in many of the teams and riders being unable to attend. Hence the delay. So this is the second round of the 2010 championship, which has seemed to start with rather more of a whimper than a bang so far.

Jerez is a great ciruit, with just enough elevation changes to make it interesting, just in case the deceptively simple but difficult to master layout wasn't enough. Racing here is usually good, usually close and usually ultimately won by Valentino Rossi. Indeed, since The Doctor has been racing I believe he has yet to finish anywhere other than first here. An impressive record indeed. And one that plenty of people will be out to upset.

Rossi started the weekend at a disadvantage, having injured his shoulder in a motorcross accident a couple of weeks back. Obviously now that he is an old man he takes longer to recover from these things, and the young pretenders are snapping at his heels. Not least Jorge Lorenzo, who must surely be the favourite to take over the mantle as The Man To Beat from his illustrious team-mate. Dani Pedrosa, too, was obviously keen to do well on this, his home track. As were any number of the countless other Spanish riders in the series. Casey Stoner was itching to get his season underway properly after the debacle in Qatar left him languishing without any points. So there was certainly plenty to fight for.

The opening free practice sessions showed that yes, Stoner was definitely up for business. The first session had the young Australian on the top of the leaderboard, ahead of Lorenzo and a rejuvenated Nicky Hayden, while the second saw Lorenzo on top from his countryman Pedrosa, while Stoner was third by just 6ix tenths of a second. Conspicuously absent from the top was Valentino Rossi, carrying that injury and definitely not his normal ebullient self.

Qualifying was a slightly different matter, though. Jorge Lorenzo took charge early on, and was beaten by Casey Stoner. But it really was still early, and the rest needed to get up to speed. Or perhaps even come out of the pits. Because just a couple of minutes later it was Valentino Rossi who took pole, beating himself on the next lap to establish a tenth of a second buffer. It was over half an hour before Jorge Lorenzo managed to knock Rossi off the top spot, which fired Pedrosa up sufficiently to get the diminutive Honda rider faster twice. The first by just a smidgen, then by a massive four tenths of a second. The last minute flying laps saw Pedrosa take a convincing pole position, ultimately just under three tenths faster than Lorenzoi, while the front row was completed by Casey Stoner who pulled something special out of the bag in the last seconds and finished just two hundredths behind Lorenzo. Heading row two after his early success, Valentino Rossi was himself under five hundredths behind Stoner, while two thousandths of a second behind The Doctor, Nicky Hayden demonstrated that he really does seem to have got to grips with the Ducati. Randy de Puniet completed the second row. Row three had Colin Edwards and Ben Spies flying the Texan flag aboard the Tech3 Yamahas, ahead of the second factory Honda of Andrea Dovizioso. And it's great to see Marco Melandri back and becoming competitive again on the Gresini Honda in tenth place.

You know what I'm going to say now, of course. All together now. Qualifying is important. But it isn't the race.

There are also some other things that should come as no surprise to you if you've ever watched a MotoGP before. Not least of which is that Dani Pedrosa is an extraordinarily quick starter, due no doubt to his lack of weight. As well as considerable talent, of course. Something else you should have realised by now is that you can never wrote off Valentino Rossi. because the World Champion got a storming start to slot into second behind Pedrosa by the second corner. Nicky Hayden, too, got a brilliant start to slide into third, ahead of Lorenzo who went backwards off the line and Casey Stoner who suffered the same fate and was immediately under pressure from Ben Spies. To put the start into perspective, by the end of the first lap there was a six tenths of a second gap from Rossi to Hayden, which just kept on increasing.

And you may think that was it. With Pedrosa in the front and Rossi behind, the result, surely, was a foregone conclusion? So with that in mind let's have a look at the midfield instead. Ben Spies, sadly, encountered a problem with the front end of the Yamaha and retired before midway using the perfectly sound logic that he couldn't hold a decent pace and was going to achieve nothing by falling off. Colin Edwards, too, was struggling though he was in the middle of the six way fight for seventh place, with the group was separated by just a second and a half in total, and led by Marco Melandri for much of the time.

Loris Capirossi was making good ground and had climbed to ninth when the front of the Suzuki folded on the third lap and dumped him unceremoniously in the gravel, thankfully without injury. The real action was definitely taking place in the midfield, and although the positions seemed to stay fairly static at the end of each lap, the reality was that there was an enormous amount of passing and counterpassing going on. To the extent that it was by far the most exciting part of the race.

Or was it?

Up at the front, Pedrosa was gradually opening a lead on Rossi, though the Italian was always close enough to be threatening and certainly kept the pressure on. And further back - a long way back, in fact - Lorenzo and Haydent battled for the last podium step. On lap ten that battle was decided in favour of the Spanish Yamaha rider, who opened a half second gap before the lap was over. But at this stage he was three and three quarter seconds off the lead, and over two seconds behind Rossi. What we saw next was really rather impressive, as Jorge Lorenzo turned in fast, perfect lap after fast, perfect lap. And in ten laps he was right with his team-mate, with the inevitable overtake coming just a couple of laps later. So now we had five laps to go and a two second gap to make up. That's really a tall order against someone like Pedrosa with a clear track. Four laps to go and the gap was down by half a second. Four tenths on the next lap. An astonishing eight tenths on the lap after than. Lorenzo was now genuinely all over the back of the Honda, and was pushing hard. Surprisingly, Pedrosa was equalling his countryman in aggression, which isn't what we normally expect. Fairings were banged, tyres were rubbed on leathers, extremely hard passing moves were made. But ultimately it came down to the final lap, with Lorenzo passing neatly but with no room for negotiation under braking at the end of the straight to take his first Spanish MotoGP win by, surprisingly, over half a second from Stoner with Rossi happy to get onto the podium some four tenths further back.

Nicky Hayden rode a stirling race to rake a lonely but very useful fourth place ahead of his team-mate Casey Stoner. Andrea Dovizioso rode an even lonelier ride to finish sixth, some thirteen seconds behind Stoner but, crucially, around nine seconds ahead of the snarling pack behind. Marco Melandri was just pipped by the Ducati of Mika Kallio with Randy de Puniet behind him. A very credible performance by new by Alvaro Bautista on the Suzuki completed the top ten.

The next round is at Le Mans at the end of May. We know that Valentino Rossi goes very well there indeed, and with a four poit deficit against his young team-mate he'll no doubt be keen to get things back to the established order. We shall see...

Jerez MotoGP Results

1. Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha)
2. Dani Pedrosa (Honda)
3. Valentino Rossi (Yamaha)
4. Nicky Hayden (Ducati)
5. Casey Stoner (Ducati)
6. Andrea Dovizioso (Honda
7. Mika Kallio (Ducati)
8. Marco Melandri (Honda)
9. Randy de Puniet (Honda)
10. Alvaro Bautista (Suzuki)

MotoGP standings (after two rounds)

1. Jorge Lorenzo 45
2. Valentino Rossi 41
3. Dani Pedrosa 29
4. Andrea Dovizioso 26
5. Nicky Hayden 26
6. Randy de Puniet 17
7. Colin Edwards 12
8. Casey Stoner 11
9. Ben Spies 11
10. Marco Melandri 11