lose many tenths of a second. Go too fast, and you can wash out at the top of the hill, or at the bottom, and your race, or even your weekend, is over.My Goodness!And that's just riding it on your own. Add other riders into the equation

? The Misano circuit most resembles distorted "T", with the arms bent down and the foot broken. After leaving the line, the first obstacle is the fast right hander of Turn 1, quickly flicking left for the Variante del Parco. Getting on the gas again briefly

Island is truly an old-fashioned road course, the sweeping turns following the lay of the land and laid out to be pleasing to ride, rather than as an exercise in design. Sepang, on the other hand, is a hyper-modern facility designed by Herman Tilke, who

Sarthe, the insane, half public roads, half closed track course, but rather the shorter, much tighter Bugatti circuit. The Bugatti circuit is a far cry from the last two tracks we visited, which had plenty of long, fast straights. It comprises a series

of him.The Alice Ducatis have a similarly long and hard road to travel. So far, Toni Elias is the only man besides Casey Stoner who seems to have a handle on riding the Ducati, but Mugello will show just how far Elias has progressed.  A podium seems

of the old public roads the race was once run over, the track width, the fast left and right flicks, and the camber, retaining a crown on the track making it physically demanding to flick the bike from left to right, as you had to literally pick the bike up

It is perhaps an interesting irony that the MotoGP circus moves from one former street circuit to another this weekend, leaving the fast, flat sweeping turns of Assen behind to visit the tight, tortuous turns of the Sachsenring circuit. But where

be up to speed, in every sense, after a full year of learning the four-stroke ropes. Then there was the meaty issue of the new 800s: what would they be like, and how would riding styles have to change to make them really fast? And finally, to top it all

, it isn't the fastest rider who wins, but the first rider to cross the line. Examples are legion of riders who are incredibly fast, but who have a tendency to find a way to end in the gravel, rather than the winner's circle.And there is more than one way

is an old road course, and flows naturally across the landscape, organically evolved rather than technologically designed. As such, it lends itself to fantastic racing, rewarding the brave and the skilled far above those with just a fast bike. Guts And Glory