-old wife, but if there's one thing that Stoner is not, it's romantic. The Australian champion is very cool, level-headed, and rational about his racing, his responses to victory and defeat almost equal in their stoicism. Not for Casey Stoner the heroic

motorcycle racing is all about: off-track mayhem and on-track action, all under a hot southern sun. The Phoney War is over, and battle is about to be joined in full force. Roll on Sunday.Read more of David Emmett's articles over on MotoGPMatters.com

to the pastoral idyll in which the circuit is located than cool analyses of the race that is to come.Once you visit Mugello, it's not hard to see how this happens. Mugello sits in a rich green valley, just to the north of Florence, the birthplace

not forget the daily temperature difference. Spring mornings usually start out cool, only warming up later, with temperatures reaching the 70s and 80s by the afternoon. Which coincidentally are the times the two daily practice sessions for MotoGP are run. We

of rubber specially crafted to handle the extreme heat of 2006. If the weather at Laguna Seca had been more like Qatar and less like Le Mans, Michelin would have been well on track to provide the winning tire. Instead, the cool morning sessions saw Michelin

Barely had the engines cooled and the dust been washed off the bikes after the race at Donington before the entire MotoGP circus was busy packing and loading up to head on over to the northern reaches of the Netherlands, and the TT Circuit at Assen

, as did the faces in the garages as they watched the rain's relentless approach on the weather radar. The 125 races had been run under great, if rather cool conditions, but as the 250 race progressed, the cloud cover grew thicker, the temperatures dropped

and you risk a very fast and very painful tumble, as run wide and hit the gravel at high speed.Too Cool For SchoolAfter a short straight, the first hairpin looms, followed by a left kink, the third left hander in a row. But more danger lurks at Turn 4

to under 9 seconds to finish 13th, ahead of James Ellison and Garry McCoy, taking the final point on the Ilmor.Conquering HeroAs the riders circulated on their cool down lap, two little vignettes illustrated perfectly the changes that had taken place here

Hayden, be able to solve the problems which seemed to dog them?Muddy WatersPractice had been a very mixed picture. The temperature differences between the cool morning sessions and the warm afternoon sessions meant that some people were running great