If you cannot blame it on the rain, you can always try the low-flying aircraft, hot-dog vans and the heavy metal doyen, Marilyn Manson. Casey Stoner’s victory in the British Grand Prix was a more straightforward affair than the excuses that continued to pour forth in his wake about the Donington Park circuit.

Valentino Rossi’s fourth place means he is 26 points adrift of Stoner, and he joined the chorus of disapproval that has long accused aeroplanes dumping fuel as they depart nearby East Midlands airport for the circuit’s grip problems.

However, in a new twist, he said: “Maybe the problem is not the aeroplanes but the concert here by Marilyn Manson a couple of weeks ago. They put the hot-dog stands on the track.”

The suggestion that grease from a mobile food joint had undermined his title challenge may have been tongue-in-cheek, but desperate times call for desperate excuses. Colin Edwards, Rossi’s Fiat Yamaha teammate, had a more simple explanation. “Two words,” he said, when asked why Rossi was not leading the standings. “Casey Stoner.” He then added a few more: “He’s fast as hell.”

With some people still expecting the bubble to burst, this was the ride of a future world champion. Having steered his Ducati to victory by 11.77sec, Stoner added his thoughts on the much-debated Donington surface. “It’s one of the worst circuits in the wet,” he said. “It gets hairy out there and something should be done. You don’t seem to get any grip – that’s why riders are crashing.”

If Stoner and Rossi thought they had problems in a race that was ruined as a spectacle by the atrocious conditions, they should have consulted Chris Vermeulen, whose wet-weather dexterity led to him taking his Rizla Suzuki to third place.

The Australian, who enjoyed his maiden grand-prix win in the rain of Le Mans this season, said that he had suffered serious problems when his visor began to steam up. “I was struggling a bit because the sweat made my visor fog over,” he said. “Casey came past and apologised [after forcing Vermeulen wide], but the truth is I could not see him and he didn’t do anything wrong. I opened my visor and thought, ‘I hope it does not rain or I might run off and hit a fence or a spectator’.”

Vermeulen’s problems were symptomatic of a troubled weekend for the British Grand Prix. The track has been widely criticised and the weather made for a strung-out race that will probably rank as the dullest of the season. That the prerace publicity had focused heavily on irrelevant comparisons to Formula One was ironic.

It was Edwards who led from pole position, but Dani Pedrosa on the Repsol Honda reeled him in before the end of the first lap. Vermeulen and his teammate, John Hopkins, made inroads on what threatened to be a bonanza for Suzuki, but Rossi struggled from the start. He dropped back as his rear tyre spun and later ran off on to the grass; it is testament to Stoner’s growing dominance that Rossi made that mistake and testament to the Italian’s skill that he managed to keep the bike upright.

Nicky Hayden, the defending champion, if deposed in all but name, crashed on the fifth lap. He remounted, pitted and failed to finish – another low point in a season of discontent.

Pedrosa, too, started to go backwards and ended up eighth. He is now a massive 56 points behind Stoner and must hope that his fellow 21-year-old rediscovers the flaws that used to see him dubbed “Rolling Stoner” on a world tour of gravel tracks. Rossi recovered to finish fourth, but to lose at a track where he had been all but invincible, with five wins in the elite class, will hurt.

Stoner, meanwhile, goes from strength to strength. So far this season, he has been accused of being unable to ride on worn tyres and tight circuits that counteract the Ducati’s power advantage and of having an illegal bike. But he has responded to all the brickbats with remarkable authority.

How Donington must wish that it could do the same. The circuit has undergone a multimillion-pound facelift, but still lags way behind most of the other venues on the MotoGP calendar.

Stoner proved his class in front of 85,000 bedraggled fans yesterday by explaining how he deliberately ignored a dry line on the track until the latter stages for fear of wearing out the tyres. With a brain like that, he may rain on Rossi’s parade for some time yet.

In the 125cc race, Bradley Smith, 17, from Oxfordshire, was an impressive seventh.

Results

MotoGP: 1, C Stoner (Aus, Ducati) 51min 40.739sec; 2, C Edwards (US, Yamaha) at 11.768sec behind; 3, C Vermeulen (Aus, Suzuki) 15.678; 4, V Rossi (It, Yamaha) 21.827; 5, J Hopkins (US, Suzuki) 35.518; 6, R De Puniet (Fr, Kawasaki) 36.474; 7, A Barros (Br, Ducati) 38.094; 8, D Pedrosa (Sp, Honda) 38.992; 9, A Hofmann (Ger, Ducati) 39.239; 10, M Melandri (It, Honda) 1:01.526. 250cc: 1, A Dovizioso (It, Honda) 48:40.173sec; 2, A De Angelis (S Mar, Aprilia) at 22.102sec; 3, H Aoyama (Japan, KTM) 1min 3.137sec. British: 9, D Linfoot (Aprilia) at 1 lap. 125cc: 1, M Pasini (It, Aprilia) 41:49.049; 2, T Koyama (Japan, KTM) at 3.253sec; 3, H Faubel (Sp, Aprilia) 5.094. British: 7, B Smith (Honda) 13.505.

Leading championship positions: MotoGP: 1, Stoner 165pts; 2, Rossi 139; 3, Pedrosa 106; 4, Vermeulen 88; 5, Hopkins 83; 6, Melandri 81. 250cc: 1, J Lorenzo (Sp, Aprilia) 153; 2, Dovizioso 142; 3, De Angelis 135. 125cc: 1, Faubel 118; 2, G Talmacsi (Hun, Aprilia) 115; 3, L Pesek (Cz, Derbi) 94.

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