The reigning champion used a strategy that gave him his first triumph of the season in a race where it was easy to make mistakes because of the rain.

�Rossi had been studying Akira Ryo, the Suzuki test rider knows the circuit like the palm of his hand, and went to the front with six laps left. He let him follow in his wake up to the last lap when he really went for it. A proud Carlos Checa was third and showed that he and his Yamaha are ready to bathe in champagne every race. The first four bikes were four strokes, which demonstrates the big difference that exists with the veteran 500cc. Ryo was after all a poor consolation for Suzuki, who lost Kenny Roberts on the sixth lap and Sete Gibernau, on the twelfth, when he was third.

MotoGP classification

�Suzuka is the only circuit where the wild cards do not go as an afterthought. They can ruin anybody�s race; this happened in 250cc. The first two were from Japan, and will not return until Motegi, where they might be invited to race. Miyazaki and Sakai crossed ahead of the first European, Randy de Puniet from France. Emilio Alzamora, who got better as the time passed finished fourth, getting 13 valuable points. Fonsi Nieto, who started in pole, fell and was 13th, whilst Toni El�as got points on his 250cc debut. Marco Melandri, another of the favourites fell six laps from the end.

250 classification

�In 125cc the pole was not much use to Daniel Pedrosa. The rain made the race a lottery, so Arnaud Vincent, Mirko Giansanti and Manuel Poggiali, the reigning champion got lucky. Just finishing was a prize for Pedrosa afte 16 riders fell. The best Spaniard was �ngel Rodr�guez, seventh, although possibly the happiest was H�ctor Barber� on his debut, only 15 and in the rain he finished just off the points 16th, and was just like a victory.