If there had been any suspicion that Valentino Rossi’s star was dimming after losing his world title and suffering the longest drought of his MotoGP career, it was banished by an utterly dominant victory in the Spanish Grand Prix and a postrace celebration involving six men dressed as skittles. Bowling people over remains his forte.

The greatest of them all, Giacomo Agostini, was here to witness Rossi’s return and had hugged him and exchanged stories beforehand. The duo’s cavalier ways bridge the generation gap and prove that sport can be fun. That is why John Hopkins, the Suzuki rider, said that Dani Pedrosa, the Spanish wunderkind, will wake up in 20 years and regret having such a remorseless and obsessive approach to his trade. Hopkins then explained how he had once set fire to a field at the Italian Grand Prix because he wanted to light up “the whole damned valley”.

Having qualified in pole position, Pedrosa had hoped to blaze a less hazardous trail of his own in front of 140,000 of his countrymen, but Rossi was in a different class yesterday. After five races without a win, he moved nine points clear of Pedrosa and Casey Stoner, the 21-year-old pretenders.

Pedrosa declared himself happy with second place on his Repsol Honda, but looked like he had just received an invitation to supper with the section of fans who turned up armed with chainsaws and a severed pig’s head. He knows Rossi seems more motivated than he has been in years and, given that Yamaha were in disarray on Saturday, the win was doubly significant. “Everybody was walking round saying ‘I don’t like this new tyre rule’, but Michelin found something,” Colin Edwards, Rossi’s teammate who came third, said.

Rossi’s postrace celebrations are legend, with this one signifying the end of his five-race barren patch. “It’s been a long time,” the Italian said after easing to a victory margin of 1.24sec. “I’ve had lots of podiums but the taste of victory is different. We were a bit desperate on Saturday morning but today we flew.”

It is from here that the season, with new rules restricting engine size and number of tyres, should take shape. The teams have so far raced on tracks where they have lots of data from testing, but they are now going into the unknown in Turkey and China.

The tyre rule effectively means teams will have to gamble more heavily, which could make for varied results. The fans will hope so because this was Rossi in his all-conquering mode of old.

It had been the closest grid in MotoGP history, with the top 15 riders separated by less than a second, but the race was more of a procession. Rossi snaffled the lead from Pedrosa on the first lap and was never threatened. Pedrosa and Edwards ended up riding similarly lonely races, with the real action taking place in their wake. Hopkins was making inroads, despite riding with a broken hand, but crashed out because of a sudden gust of wind on the sixteenth lap, while Toni Elias at least caused Edwards some concern. “I remember Elias coming from nowhere to win in 2003,” he said. “I thought ‘instant Spanish hero’ at the time, so when I saw my board with ‘Elias plus three’ on, I thought ‘s***, anyone but him.’ ”

Elsewhere, the misery endures for Nicky Hayden, the world champion, who struggled home in sixth place and is already 28 points adrift of Rossi. However, perspective was provided by the horrific crash suffered by Roberto Locatelli, the former 125cc champion, in practice for the 250cc race. He was airlifted to intensive care, underwent a blood transfusion and will need reconstructive surgery after suffering multiple fractures to his skull. Nevertheless, he hopes to be back for the Italian Grand Prix in June.

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