It looks very much like Dani Pedrosa will not be fit for the opening Qatar race in a couple of weeks because he still has very limited movement in his knee after surgery.

This, of course, will not help his title chances very much at all and it has been said that if Pedrosa does not win the MotoGP title this season, Honda are going to press the big red button with eject drawn on it. He has as much chance of lifting the title this year as you have trying to herd cats.

Monster Yamaha's James Toseland had another cold-tyre highside at the Jerez test, breaking a fiddly little bone in his foot. The former World Superbike Champion was knocked out in the crash and taken to Cadiz hospital for a brain scan. They didn't find anything.

Toseland's team-mate Colin Edwards is, meanwhile, quite happy that a partition wall has gone up in the garage because it will stop beady eyes looking at what he is doing, apparently.

Nicky Hayden's season is not going to plan and he himself admitted the timed session at Jerez was a disaster. The former World Champion was fourth out of five Ducatis, being shown up by youngster Mika Kallio and about-to-get-his-buspass Sete Gibernau. Not good.

Marlboro Ducati's test rider Vito Guareschi was toddling round near the back at Jerez while testing a new aluminium chassis on the GP9. It's the same design as the carbon one, but ally is cheaper, said the factory's technical big giant head Filippo Preziosi.

Mika Kallio found himself as second fastest Ducati at Jerez, the quickest rookie and sixth on the timesheets, not far behind Valentino Rossi. He would be faster, he reckons, if he stopped riding it like a 250.

Gresini Honda's Toni Elias is having his head dented by a lack of rear grip on his RC212V and cold track temperatures at Jerez didn't help him. He reckons he knows what the problem is but can't find a solution. Hmmmm.

Repsol Honda's Andrea Dovizioso reckons that his Jerez lap times, when looked at in isolation, are very good. But when you compare them to Stoner's, they're not so good. Er, yes.

Casey Moaner didn't whine or whinge one bit before, during or after the Jerez tests. I'm not surprised. He has just won another new BMW to go with the other BMWs he has won in the past. And he reckons his wrist is OK too. Which is nice.

Marco Melandri reckons he is happy that his Bad Wind was able to keep up at Jerez despite being a billion years old. The factory is, apparently, going to look after the engine and provide some parts, which is about as useful as a barbed-wire pillow.

Jorge Lorenzo will, he says, have to stick to driving his new and presumably free Fiat 500 after failing to win the Sauber Petronas Special Edition Didn't We Do Well Oh Didn't We Win BMW 135i. Diddums.