lap and increased his gap to 3.5 seconds on lap 10. With Checa—who had fought his way back up to second—and Rossi trying to close the gap (which was nearly six seconds at one point) in the closing stages of the race, Gibernau had begun to pin back his throttle a little bit more at every corner and succeeded to halt the assault of the Honda riders by setting a new fastest lap of his own to keep the gap stable at around five seconds. With Rossi and Gibernau evenly matched for much of the race, Rossi closed in slowly to get within three seconds of Gibernau but realised that he could not win the race by closing in alone. He decided that the only way for him to win would be to force Gibernau into a mistake, which arrived on lap 25 when the rear of the number #15's factory Suzuki swung round on the entry to the chicane, throwing Gibernau hard onto the tarmac before slowly sliding into the gravel with four laps to go. It looked like he could remount to finish the race, but the fall—combined with his disappointment—meant that he lay motionless in the gravel. Rossi went on to win the race, with Checa second and Ukawa in third. At the following round in Rio de Janeiro, Gibernau went on to score points again by finishing in eighth place, before he retired for the seventh time this season at the Pacific GP, this time due to engine issues when the exhaust of his factory Suzuki stopped in a cloud of smoke. Gibernau would finish the last three races of the season on a more positive note, finishing the Malaysian, Australian and Valencian Community rounds in the points—namely 14th, 12th and 13th. Gibernau finished 16th in the championship with 51 points, 304 points behind the champion Valentino Rossi and 164 points behind runner-up Max Biaggi. Honda (2003–2005) 2003 For the 2003 season, Gibernau moved to the Honda Gresini Racing team along with his sponsor Telefónica, riding the five-cylinder Honda RC211V. At the season-opening round in Japan, Gibernau finished fourth. Tragically, his Japanese teammate Daijiro Kato died on the same race after he collided with the barriers at the Casio Triangle chicane at high speed. The tragedy seemed to inspire the notoriously temperamental and spiritual Gibernau. After being given Kato's full works spec bike and riding with