The 2006 German motorcycle Grand Prix was the tenth round of the 2006 MotoGP Championship. It took place on the weekend of 14–16 July 2006 at the Sachsenring. MotoGP race report This race was most notable for the four-way battle for the win that happened throughout the race, as well as Rossi's victory from tenth on the grid. After nine rounds, Nicky Hayden still leads the championship with 153 points. A rather distant second is rookie Dani Pedrosa with 127 and in third Valentino Rossi with 118, who has climbed up the order in a rather quick pace after early season mechanical problems and driver errors cost him quite some points. On Saturday, Dani Pedrosa took pole position - his fourth and final of the season - with a time of 1:21.815. Lining alongside him in second is Kenny Roberts Jr., who took a surprise front row place by only being +0.092 seconds off the pace of Pedrosa - and teammate Nicky Hayden in third place. The second row of the grid consists out of Shinya Nakano on the Kawasaki in fourth, Loris Capirossi in fifth and Marco Melandri in sixth position. Rossi meanwhile only managed to qualify a lowly tenth and thus was down on the fourth row of the grid. Another rookie - Casey Stoner - did not participate in the race due to a concussion he sustained after a crash earlier that day during the warm-up practice. All riders take off and do their usual warm-up lap before lining up in their respective grid slots. As the lights go out, Pedrosa has a great start and retains his lead going into the Coca-Cola Kurve (Turn 1) on the opening lap. Roberts Jr. retains his position, as does Hayden in third. Makoto Tamada meanwhile has also had a fantastic start, passing multiple riders from ninth to move up into fourth place. Capirossi and Melandri have swapped places, Melandri now being fifth and Capirossi sixth. At Turn 3, Capirossi then loses another place to John Hopkins and another one at the Castrol Omega (Turn 4) to a fast charging Rossi, demoting him to eighth place in just four corners. He is now ahead of Nakano - who had a bad start and lost a few places as well. Halfway into the lap, the top five have started to open up a slight gap back to sixth place Hopkins. Inside