Brave Rossi beats pain and the best of Spain

Italy's Valentino Rossi became the king of courage when he won the 100th world championship race of his spectacular career in the British grand prix yesterday.

The 23-year-old Honda rider raced with a cracked bone in his left thumb and a bruised body after a crash on Friday that would have kept an ordinary human away from the office for a month.

But he bounced back to claim pole position on Saturday, and yesterday broke the challenge of Spain's Carlos Checa also competing in his 100th grand prix to win his seventh race out of eight this season. Checa, the initial leader, slid off his Yamaha on the 18th lap after Rossi had pressured him relentlessly at speeds of up to 170mph.

It was the 46th grand prix victory of the Italian's career, his fifth on the Leicestershire circuit, and his 12th consecutive podium finish. He also shattered the lap record for the 2.5-mile track with a 98.2mph lap.

Yet less than 60 seconds before setting off on the warm-up lap on his 200bhp machine, he had been relaxed enough to pull faces at the TV cameras. His easy win over Yamaha's Max Biaggi was cheered by a crowd of 60,000 the largest at a British motorcycle grand prix for a decade.

Rossi has emerged as the Michael Schumacher of motorcycle racing but with a personality and mischievous sense of humour that endears him to fans no matter how relentlessly he wins.

"It was a hard crash, but I was able to race at 100%," he said. "After Checa had lost his front end my biggest problem was to maintain concentration."

Britain's Jeremy McWilliams started on the second row on the 500cc Proton built in Oxfordshire by the former world champion Kenny Roberts, but retired with mechanical problems. His team-mate Nobuatsu Aoki finished ninth.

An error on the penultimate lap of the 125cc race cost the British 15-year-old Chaz Davies the chance to score his first world championship point. He battled from 24th to 15th place worth one point but ran off the track and finished 16th.

"I hit a neutral going into the Esses and went straight on. It cost me four seconds," he said.

His mother Sam said: "Normally I never watch him race; it scares me to death. But I ran to the pit wall to see the last lap because I thought he was going to get a point. We're heartbroken, but this will encourage him for the future."

The race was won by French rider Arnaud Vincent. Two other British teenagers, Midge Smart and Guy Farbrother, each crashed for the third time in the weekend and failed to finish.

An Australian 16-year-old, Casey Stoner, who won the British Superteen championship in 2000, finished 11th in the 250cc race, won by the world championship leader Marco Melandri.

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