Motegi, Japan

Standing on the cusp of a championship is a strangely perilous position. You see the title within your grasp, you can almost touch it, taste it, but you know you have just a little bit more work to do before it is finally yours. It should be relatively easy. All you need to do is to stay out of trouble, and score enough points to get the job done.

The problem is that it grates to do just what is needed and no more. The very ambition, the need to win that drove you on to chase the championship leaves you unhappy at just rolling over the line somewhere in the top 10, your pride bridles at the thought of safely playing the numbers game.

All those long hours of hard work; riding through the pain of injuries, major or minor; staying home and getting up early to go training instead of sleeping late after a night out; you didn't do all those things just to be the guy who comes in 7th. You want to clinch the title the same way you got within reach of it: by standing on the podium, and preferably on the top step.

Add to this the peril of trying to ride slowly. It is in the nature of motorcycle racers to try to go as fast as possible, and you have spent years honing your fitness and concentration levels to perform as close to 100% as you can. But back off a little, try riding at 95%, and your ability to focus tends to lapse, and you start to make mistakes. Mistakes which can be costly, leaving you with more work to do at the next race, or worse, robbing you of the title altogether through an unlucky crash.

The Prize

This is the paradox of being within striking distance of a championship. The final effort required is minimal, but the pressure you are under is greater than anything you have ever known before. The rewards may be priceless, and long cherished, but the price of failure rises to match the price of success.

Valentino Rossi knows all about the price of failure. The last time he was in a position to win a title, at Valencia in 2006, it all went horribly wrong for him. With an 8 point lead, all he had to was finish a couple of places behind Nicky Hayden, but it wasn't to be. On the day, Rossi cracked under the pressure and crashed early on, rejoining too far behind to make up the places he had lost, handing the American the title on a plate.

So despite arriving at Motegi 87 points ahead of Casey Stoner in the championship, with only 100 points left from the remaining 4 races, pressure was building on Rossi like a descending bathysphere. And making the situation a little bleaker was his history here at Motegi: Of the 8 visits he'd paid in the premier class, he'd managed to win only once. What's more, the last time he had a chance of settling the title at Motegi - back in 2005 - he crashed out, taking Marco Melandri with him in a dubious move that could have easily seen him banned for a race, as happened to his future team mate Jorge Lorenzo in the 250 class.

Best Served Cold

Despite his poor record at Motegi, Rossi was under even more pressure to win here. Honda, his former employer, owns the Japanese track, and even though Rossi had taken two more titles since leaving Big Red, Honda's attitude - that the bike was paramount, and the rider merely part of the team that helped Honda win - had always rankled, and provided an added motivation for wanting to take victory at Motegi.

During free practice, little of that pressure showed. Rossi had been in the top three in all of the sessions on Friday and Saturday morning, and as qualifying started, Rossi was clearly on the pace to get the front row spot he needed if he was to keep Casey Stoner in sight. But by the time the flag fell for the end of the session, some miscalculation and a little bit of bad luck saw Rossi off the front of grid, and down onto the second row.

The pressure was now really on. With Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner on the front row, and Dani Pedrosa, a lightning starter, beside him, the odds of Rossi wrapping the title up at Motegi were dwindling. His only hope was that someone such as Nicky Hayden, who had the final spot on the front row, could get up with Stoner, Lorenzo and Pedrosa and hold them up, giving Rossi a chance to slug it out with them before Stoner could do his usual disappearing act. After flying his friends and family halfway around the world for a special title celebration, he could not afford to fail.

For the past few years, Suzuki has been using the slogan "Own The Racetrack" to market its legendary and long-running GSX-R sports bikes line. Of course, when they use the phrase "own the racetrack" they mean it in a metaphorical sense, of being the best bike out on the circuit, rather than the literal sense of actually paying money to own and operate a racing facility for your own personal use.

Yet that is exactly what a number of manufacturers have chosen to do. Literally owning your own racetrack offers a whole swathe of advantages if you design and produce any kind of vehicle, and so this is a path that several bike makers have elected to follow. Yamaha owns the Sportsland Sugo track, for example, and Kawasaki owns the Autopolis International Racing Course near Hita in Japan.

As befits the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, Honda owns more racetracks than the others, holding the deeds for both the Twin Ring Motegi circuit, site of Sunday's Japanese MotoGP round, and its former location, the Suzuka International Race Course. And Honda's pair of race tracks could hardly be more different: where Motegi is a straightforward stop-and-go track with little to commend it, Suzuka is fast, flowing and challenging, presenting the rider with a series of problems to overcome. Sadly, since Dajiro Katoh's tragic death there in 2003 - the incident which sparked the initial discussions on reducing engine capacity to 800cc - the Japanese Grand Prix is no longer held at Suzuka, and has been switched to Motegi instead.

A Tale Of Two Circuits

Like Suzuka, Motegi was originally built as a test track for developing Honda's range of vehicles. And like Suzuka, Motegi features a mixture of turns, from tight hairpins to long sweepers, taken at a range of speeds. But where John Hugenholtz managed to imbue Suzuka with character and charm, and connect the corners in such a way as to create a kind of racing narrative, Motegi's designers created a track where a series of turns of a given specification were simply connected by the most straightforward means possible.

Even the corner names are uninspiring, simple descriptions of the type of corner involved. Turns such as S Curve, Hairpin, 90 Corner all speak for themselves, with only the merest sliver of imagination going into Victory Corner, the final turn before heading back down the front straight. For the most part, though, the track consists of a series of medium-length straights, most of which are connected by varying radius hairpins.

Fortunately, in addition to the selection of about-face turns, there's a flowing section to add some appeal. After zigzagging back along the 3rd short straight from the starting line, a sharp right leads on to the most interesting part of the track. The fast 130R gives riders a chance to line rivals up through the S Curve, and that left-right flick and the V Curve gives them a chance to pass and get re-passed before the harsh braking for the Hairpin turn, a tight 180 leading on to the long back straight.

The end of the straight sees another opportunity for a pass - though it is all too easy to end in the gravel, as the end of the straight dips slightly downhill just as the riders are hardest on the brakes - before heading back to the final chicane, and then across the line.

Must Try Harder

Ironically, owning Motegi has not allowed Honda to own the racetrack very often in recent years. The Japanese giant has been forced to watch the tiny Italian usurpers Ducati and Loris Capirossi take the glory of victory for the past three years. Even before Capirossi started dominating at Motegi, it was usually the satellite teams who managed to win at Motegi, rather than the factory riders, with 2001 the last time a rider on a full factory Honda won here.

The biggest problem for Honda has been that the track has favored Bridgestones, with bikes on the Japanese tires taking the last 4 races, while the Repsol Honda team have been left to struggle on Michelins. So overwhelming was the Bridgestone domination last year that the first man home on Michelins was Nicky Hayden in 9th, beaten even by Sylvain Guintoli on the Dunlop shod Tech 3 Yamaha.

A New Hope

HRC don't want to have to go through that again, and this weekend, they could finally have the answer. Four weeks ago, after the Misano Grand Prix, Dani Pedrosa made a shock switch to Bridgestone tires, HRC and Bridgestone finally relenting to the pressure put on them by the Spaniard, his mentor Alberto Puig, and Repsol, the Spanish company which has poured a lot of resources into the program over the years, and is desperate for another Spanish champion.