 1 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Sunday April 12, 2009 Qatar is the first round of the season and is held at night time. This year, it rained on race day and the MotoGP race was held over until the Monday. The problem was that rain on the tracks, combined with the artificial lighting, produced blinding reflections. |
 2 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Saturday April 11, 2009 Front row was Stoner, Rossi and Lorenzo. The second row was Dovizioso, Edwards, Capirossi. Pedrosa was riding with a fractured wrist and a reopened knee injury and qualified 14th. |
 3 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monay April 13, 2009 Finally 22 hours later, the race begins. This season, all riders are using Bridgestone tyres. |
 4 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 Casey Stoner leads the pack into turn 1. |
 5 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 By turn 4, Rossi is demoted to fourth behind Stoner, Capirossi and Lorenzo. |
 6 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 The usual stragglers are at the rear. Tony Elias is on the right hanging nearly off the bike as is his style. |
 7 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 Rossi overtakes Lorenzo and Capirossi and goes after Stoner; the gap stabilises at about 2 seconds. Capirossi (65) crashes on lap 7. |
 8 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 Lorenzo overtakes Dovizioso on lap 8 and moves into third but is .5 second/lap slower than Stoner and Rossi in front. |
 9 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 Casey wins by nearly 8 seconds over Rossi. Still, it was a better start to Rossi's year than last year when he finished fifth. |
 10 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 It was a processional, boring race as is usually produced by these modern tracks designed for F1 cars. The podium positons did not alter after lap 8. Positions 4, 5 and 6 did not alter after lap 18. The gap back to 6th was an incredible 30 seconds - so much for the single tyre rule making the racing closer. |
 11 Round 1 - Losail, Qatar Monday April 13, 2009 The big disappointment was Nicky Hayden who seemed to be having the same problems with the Ducati that Marco Melandri had last year. Andrea Dovizioso was the top placed Honda. |
