Casey Stoner‘s return to MotoGP from sort of illness only gets better, having qualified on pole for his home race in Australia. He should win, and my God it’s good to be back up to three riders who can beat Valentino Rossi once in a while. Rossi starts 2nd, Dani Pedrosa – who crashed in qualifying – 3rd, and Jorge Lorenzo 4th. Colin Edwards starts 5th, as always.

The most remarkable event from Phillip Island so far wasn’t in qualifying though, but in second practice on Friday. Marco Melandri hit a seagull full on, and pretty much destroyed the poor thing. You can see it here on the MotoGP Facebook page.

Then there was Formula 1 qualifying. Q1 went pretty much as planned, apart from a red flag caused by a Giancarlo Fisichello spin, and finished about 15 minutes late, albeit in rather wet conditions.

Q2 was delayed, but eventually got going about an hour after the start of qualifying. Not too bad. The weather wasn’t much better though, and it was quickly red flagged by Vitantonio Liuzzi crashing.

The restart came more than an hour later. The wait was a whole lot of fun though – for the BBC team especially, who moved from BBC One to Two during the mammoth delay, and had to put together a whole lot of padding. Note: it wasn’t actually fun.

Sebastian Vettel had already gone out in Q1, and Jenson Button followed him when Q2 eventually concluded, having been on the wrong tyres for the drying track. No dramas for Q3, just lots of trading of fastest laps, ending up with Rubens Barrichello on pole at home. He was quite happy about that. Fuel weights yet to be released, so we’ll see how things look when we know those.

But if that was an unconventional build up to a race, it’s been far worse for the A1GP season opener in Australia next weekend, which has mainly not prepared at all, and so has been cancelled. Series boss Tony Teixeira is characteristically defiant:

“A1GP may be down, but I do not accept we are out. We have had four exciting seasons that have proved we are a force in the sport and now we shall consolidate on what we have achieved to date. My efforts will be on finding a way forward with the support of some very loyal people.”

I do hope he succeeds. I like A1GP.