Petrosa suffered a broken collarbone in Japan

By Matt Roberts BBC MotoGP reporter

Dani Pedrosa made an uncomfortable and ultimately futile 21,000-mile round trip from Barcelona to Phillip Island over the weekend, withdrawing from the Australian Grand Prix after taking part in free practice and qualifying.

The Spaniard had missed the previous round in Malaysia after he broke a collarbone in a crash a week earlier in Japan, caused when the throttle of his Honda RC212V became stuck open.

Such a rare and uncharacteristic technical problem for Honda was compounded in Pedrosa's absence on Sunday, when his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso was forced to retire from the race when the steering damper mounting on his bike became loose.

Thankfully Dovizioso escaped a serious incident but with Pedrosa now recuperating in Switzerland, Honda can only have themselves to blame if Ducati's Casey Stoner overhauls both of them in the chase for second in the championship.

With three wins from the last four races, the Australian is currently the form rider in the field.

Loris Capirossi also missed the race in Australia, summing up a miserable couple of months for the veteran Italian.

Capirossi was ruled out of the Aragon race in September because of injuries, suffered at Misano, which required surgery to reconstruct the bone and reattach the severed tendon in his little finger.

He made a brave return two weeks later at Motegi and after qualifying badly, after a crash at the end of the session, he was fighting for fifth place in the race, only to retire when an electrical fault with his GSV-R sent it into a fail-safe mode.

A massive crash in the second free practice session at Sepang six days later left him with severe bruising to his heel and ankle but the 37-year-old returned for qualifying practice in the afternoon to secure ninth place on the grid. On the Sunday, another electrical problem forced him to pull out of the race on the fifth lap.

Then at Phillip Island another high-speed crash at the end of qualifying left him with a strained adductor muscle at the top of his left thigh. Despite his best efforts, he was declared unfit to ride by the circuit doctors.

Suzuki could learn a lot from Capirossi's commitment to the cause as they move closer to a decision to run only one bike in 2011, with half of the team's mechanics already having been told their jobs are not safe. Alvaro Bautista will definitely be staying with the team, with Capirossi moving to Pramac Ducati on a two-year deal.

Mika Kallio contested his final MotoGP race with Pramac Ducati in Australia, as the Finnish rider will be replaced in the team for the final two rounds by Carlos Checa.

Kallio has endured a torrid season

As a 250cc grand prix winner Kallio has undoubted pedigree but he has endured a torrid season, besieged by personal problems and the notoriously fickle set-up demands of the Desmosedici GP10.

Kalli has not managed a top-ten finish since July, and the team have opted to draft in the experienced Spaniard Checa, who finished third riding a Ducati in the World Superbike series this year and should at least guarantee national publicity in the final two rounds at Estoril and Valencia.

The fickleness of the relationship between man and MotoGP machine has rarely been more evident than in the recent life and times of Marco Melandri, the man who finished runner-up to Valentino Rossi in 2005 and has 20 premier-class podiums to his name, including five wins.

A disastrous season with Ducati in 2008 was followed by a year of vindication on the Hayate machine in 2009, but a prodigal return to Honda Gresini, with whom he enjoyed his best seasons in 2005, 2006 and 2007, has not been the blissful reunion they were hoping for.

Melandri has a best result of sixth this year and after qualifying 10th on Saturday his comments in the team's press release could hardly have been less objective.

"Another terrible day. We're working hard without a minimal sign of improvement. We have so many problems, to be honest I can't wait for the season to finish," he said.

After a ninth-placed finish on Sunday he used his personal Twitter site to make his position even more clear: "2 very hard races to go... Bike doesn't like me, I don't like her..."

Ben Spies has had no such relationship problems with his Yamaha YZR-M1 and another impressive top-five finish at Phillip Island ensured he secured the 2010 Rookie of the Year title for the Texan.

Ben Spies is the 2010 Rookie of the Year

So far Spies has taken two podiums, a pole position and has been rewarded with a factory ride with the Japanese manufacturer for 2011, but he insists his work is not done yet.

"I'm happy to be Rookie of the Year, I beat a lot of good guys for that and it will be an achievement I can be proud of at the end of the season," said the 26 year-old, who started from the front row in Australia.

"I've had some good results during this three-week stretch and I'm now looking forward to the last two rounds. I would like to get another podium so that is the goal."

Valentino Rossi will be making way for Spies at Yamaha as he joins Ducati next season and he couldn't have had a closer look at his new bike than when passing Nicky Hayden for third place at Phillip Island.

Rossi's last lap 'hip and shoulder' on his team-mate for next year was reminiscent of one of his more polite manoeuvres on current colleague Jorge Lorenzo at Motegi two weeks ago but this time there was reluctant acceptance rather than rage in the garage of the defeated.

Hayden's decision to pass Rossi with three laps remaining as opposed to biding his time to the final lap arguably cost the American a place on the podium and the honour of beating 'The Doctor' at his own game.

"I can't really look at it like that," sighed Hayden. "I don't want to make excuses or be a cry baby and say 'maybe if I did this or that it would be different' because the bottom line is I got fourth, I got beaten.

"I feel down because this is a track I love, I felt good and to beat Rossi on the last lap would have been really good for me but I can't dress it up."

Rossi will get an even closer feel for the Desmosedici GP10 following the final race of the season at Valencia in three weeks' time, with Masao Furusawa, Yamaha's Executive Officer for Engineering Operations, confirming to him last Saturday night that the Japanese factory will give him permission to ride the Italian bike on the Tuesday and Wednesday after the season's final race.

Ducati's long-term attention could be turning towards British teenage sensation Scott Redding, who has emerged as one of the hottest prospects in Moto2 with a superb run of late season form.

Redding has qualified on the front row at five of the last six races in the ultra competitive class and in Malaysia, despite being forced to retire from the podium battle due to dehydration, his pace prompted an informal approach from Vitto Guareschi, the Ducati factory team manager.

Even though he recently signed a two-year deal to stay with the Marc VDS team, the 17-year-old will have surely caught the eye of factory bosses again in Australia, where he took a season-best finish of second place with a performance so focused that he couldn't even recall the majority of it.

Redding is one for the future

"Man, I was so pumped I can't even remember what happened!" he grinned afterwards. "It's really weird, even on the podium I didn't know what was going on, I was just so pumped for it today."

Redding wasn't the only one drawing a blank during the race, local wildcard Wayne Maxwell losing his cool after being wiped out by the British teenager's team-mate Hector Faubel.

Maxwell reacted by punching the Spaniard and pushing him to the ground in the gravel trap, earning himself a €5,000 fine.

"I will be writing a letter of apology to Hector Faubel for my actions," said the 27-year-old. "Until I was told afterwards I didn't even know it was him."

Whilst Alex de Angelis took his first win in the class, the new Moto2 World Champion Toni Elias crossed the line in a lowly seventh - the Spaniard perhaps still feeling the effects of his title celebrations in Malaysia.

After being crowned on the same day as Jorge Lorenzo at Sepang, Elias turned up at his compatriot's party in a downtown Kuala Lumpur hotel, where the host gleefully threw him into the rooftop swimming pool.

Unsurprisingly both Lorenzo and Elias arrived in Melbourne with a sniffle, although they can expect a full on blow-out as they arrive back to a heroes' welcome in Spain this week.

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