“There's not one single shred of me that feels the slightest bit sorry for Nicky Hayden,” Colin Edwards said after his fellow American ran out of fuel yards from the end of the Dutch TT on Saturday and allowed the Texan to secure a rare podium finish. “After two years ago, screw him. I'm going to call it karma corner.”

The MotoGP World Championship was blown open by a red typhoon as Casey Stoner and his Ducati blitzed the opposition to win by a massive 11-second margin. With Valentino Rossi, who started the day top of the overall positions, crashing on the first lap, it was a red-letter day for the Australian. Dani Pedrosa's second place meant that he is four points clear of Rossi, but Stoner, the world champion, is only a further 25 adrift. “I'm not close enough to make them panic,” he said, but the gauntlet is down.

Rossi's crash was of his own making. He remounted his Fiat Yamaha and finished eleventh but it was an opportunity wasted. “I think I am a d***head,” Rossi said, after apologising to Randy de Puniet for taking him out.

Pedrosa was comfortable in second and the only real drama that followed was on the final bend. Hayden had third place wrapped up until the 2006 champion began to stutter like a nervous novice on a cold Sunday morning. The tank of his Repsol Honda was bone dry and he just made it over the line, but not before Edwards had passed him on his Tech 3 Yamaha and leaving Hayden in fifth place. In 2006 Edwards led Hayden going into the same bend but crashed. He licked his wounds and Hayden went on to win the title. Karma corner, indeed.

Bradley Smith, a 17-year-old from Garsington in Oxfordshire, was suffering from bad karma, too. After a 35-year wait for a British winner in the 125cc class it suddenly seemed as though Britain was going to get two in a week. After Scott Redding's heroics at the British Grand Prix six days earlier, Smith was riding a peerless race at the front on his Polaris World Aprilia. The teenager had carved out a 3.1-second lead when the rain came and he fell badly.

The race was stopped and rerun over five laps, with the grid positions taken from the end of the previous lap. It meant that Smith was in pole position, but the short race was a cut-throat sprint and he ended up fifth, with Gabor Talmacsi, of Hungary, winning and the top eight riders separated by less than one second. “I'm so disappointed because everything was going so well,” Smith said.

James Toseland, too, is finding life hard after a remarkable opening to his rookie season in MotoGP. Hindered by the mixed weather, which did not allow him to get a good base setting on his Tech 3 Yamaha, he fought hard for ninth place. He is now eighth in the title race but knows that fifth place is within his grasp, which would be a huge achievement.

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