 1 TT Circuit Assen, Netherlands |
 2 The story of this race was the extremely dangerous nature of the track. Loris Capirosi badly injured himself during FP2. John Hopkins crashed his Kawasaki during qualifying and severely injured his legs which put him out of the next three races. His ankle was shattered and required a metal plate and four screws. |
 3 Pole position went to Stoner with the next two positions going to Pedrosa and Rossi. Rossi had his usual poor start and dropped back into the clutches of Edwards and Vermeulen while Pedrosa and Stoner rocketed away at the front. |
 4 On the first of the left handers, Rossi's rear tyre let go and he crashed into Randy De Puniet. The circuit is predominantly right handers and the left side of his tyre was still cold. Later, Rossi commented "I think I was a dickhead". |
 5 Rossi held on to the throttle and remounted and took chase. Unfortunately, Colin Edwards who was riding in close company with Rossi, had to brake almost to a stop to avoid crashing; he resumed the race at the back of the pack. Vermeulin appears to be riding through the gravel but he is still safely on the tarmac. |
 6 Sixteen bikes started with Rossi taking Randy De Puniet out of the race. Then Alex De Angeles crashed on the first lap which left only 14 bikes in the race. Ant West crashed on lap 7 and then there were 13. Rossi needed only to finish the race to collect championship points. |
 7 Stoner moved ahead of Pedrosa and had a pole-to-finish win. Nicky Hayden put in his best race of the season and maintained third until a hundred or so metres from the finish line when he ran out of fuel. Meanwhile, Colin Edwards passed Nicky as Nicky coasted over the finish line. Rossi overtook Melandri and Elias to finish 11th and take 5 championship points. |
 8 With only 13 finishers and a gap from first to second of over ten seconds and a similar gap back to third, this was the worst race of the season so far. Dani Pedrosa now moved into the championship lead on 171, ahead of Rossi on 167 with Stoner closing the gap on 142. Lorenzo was a long way back on 114 having finished sixth. |
 9 Kropotkin's Assen GP race review |
