It’s an early start to the motorsport weekend this week: 2am tomorrow morning, when the first practice session for the Japanese Formula 1 Grand Prix gets under way at Suzuka. The second session follows at 6am, so it’ll be nice to catch a bit of the BBC Red Button coverage with breakfast for the first time since the early fly-away races.

It gets busy on Sunday, and ambitiously I’m planning to tweet away all day, starting with the Formula 1 race at 6am. But we’ve discussed Formula 1 quite enough for now.

There’s an awful lot to be decided at Brands Hatch, where three races around the full GP circuit will decide the outcome of the 2009 British Touring Car Championship. Fabrizio Giovanardi is 13 points behind current leader Colin Turkington, Jason Plato is another 15 points back, and there are 45 points up for grabs. Plato is the only one of the three to have won a race in the last two meetings, but VX Racing and Team RAC have more opportunities for team tactics – so it should be a fantastic end to the season. The races are at 11.45am, 2.20pm and 5.10pm.

In amongst that lot we have to fit in MotoGP from Portugal. The big news there is that Casey Stoner will be back on the Ducati, so all eyes will be on him. I like the man, so hopefully he’ll be right back at the front, and with Dani Pedrosa make the championship battle between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo far from straight-forward. That’s at 1pm, with the 250cc at 11.15am and 125cc at 2.30pm – when Bradley Smith will be hoping to regain second place in the standings.

Particularly in the last couple of races, I can’t help feeling that the BBC MotoGP commentary team are being rather generous towards James Toseland.

Everyone likes Toseland, and rightly so – he seems like a thoroughly decent chap. And he’s a good rider – his two World Superbike titles were hardly accidental.

But Steve Parrish and Charlie Cox have pretty much given up looking at the facts.

At Indianapolis, Toseland finished 6th – a place behind team-mate Colin Edwards – which equalled his best result in MotoGP. This was trumpeted as a fantastic result. It was all right.

The fact, though, is Toseland has never finished higher than 6th. When Edwards has taken three podiums since the two have been team-mates, that’s not good enough. But it’s not spectacularly bad, either.

It got really silly at Misano at the weekend, however, when Toseland’s 10th place was called a good result. Matt Roberts’s column described his performance as “encouraging”. Why do we have such low expectations?

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Toseland is rubbish and doesn’t deserve his place in the MotoGP paddock. He’s doing okay, and isn’t out of place in the top flight.

But he consistently under-performs compared to his team-mate, so it wouldn’t be criminal for Tech 3 Yamaha to see if someone else might not do a better job.

Which might well happen – and it would be very sad to see no Brit in MotoGP again next season. But we shouldn’t be surprised if that comes to be.

It’s what we all wanted: former Eurosport pundit Randy Mamola on the BBC’s MotoGP coverage.

Okay, he was only talking to Matt Roberts about Casey Stoner, because he works with Ducati, taking people out on the team’s two-seater bike.

But it clearly hasn’t escaped Mamola’s attention that certain fans of the Eurosport coverage he was a part of are, well, less than keen on the BBC’s coverage.

Being a cheeky sort of fellow, he couldn’t resist giving a knowingly ringing endorsement of the BBC’s coverage at the end of his interview.

Matt Roberts: “Alright, thanks a lot for talking to us, Randy.”

Randy Mamola: “One sec. From everybody at the BBC, keep up the good work. [laughs]”

Matt Roberts: “[laughing] Thanks Randy, we’ll try.”

With every day that passes, Randy Mamola becomes even more of a tremendous human being.

The MotoGP race from Brno this weekend should be interesting, but possibly more academically than action-packed.

Casey Stoner is out, which means that it’s likely to be just Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa battling for the win.

Lorenzo is 25 points – a race win – behind Rossi in the championship. He’s scored no points twice this season to Rossi’s once, so really can’t afford to do that again. But he needs to beat Rossi to have any hope of the title, so is going to have to push hard. It’s a tough situation.

Pedrosa isn’t really in contention for the championship, so he’s just going to be out for race wins, and as such should be excellent value.

The academic interest will be in seeing how Mika Kallio does on Stoner’s factory Ducati. He’s done reasonably well so far, considering he’s a rookie, on a Ducati – a satellite Ducati at that – and not called Casey Stoner. He’s only a couple of championship positions behind Nicky Hayden on the other factory Ducati, so it’ll be interesting to see how they compare on equal machinery. It has the potential to be quite embarrassing for Hayden.

We’ll also see how Michel Fabrizio copes on Kallio’s Pramac Ducati. He’s currently third in the Superbike World Championship for the factory Ducati squad, so there’s no doubt that the man can ride a Ducati. But a MotoGP Ducati? There’s only one man who can ride one of those, and he’s injured.

Driver and rider changes are uncommonly common this year, and they’re starting to become significant.

Felipe Massa’s injury-enforced break from Formula 1 is disappointing, but at least he wasn’t fighting for the championship. Not so Casey Stoner, who is out of the next three MotoGP races while he tries to shake his continuing health issues.

With Dani Pedrosa at less than full fitness early in the season, it’s going to be left to the Yamaha boys to contest the championship. Luckily they’re close on points, but it’s disappointing that it’s a two horse race, essentially for medical reasons.

But at least it is a two horse race. Early on in British Superbikes, Leon Camier’s main competition was going to be Sylvain Guintoli, but a crash at the third meeting of the year put him out of action. Camier’s pretty much taking the piss now, taking a triple victory at Brands Hatch at the weekend to give him a ludicrous lead in the championship.

It’s a slightly different story in the British Touring Car Championship. James Thompson joined Team Dynamics at the second meeting, and has since then risen to 5th in the standings. Knockhill this weekend will be his final meeting, because his packed schedule is full of Dutch, World and Australian touring car commitments.

Had he been with Team Dynamics from the off, with more pre-season testing and a full campaign, he would have been a front-runner. But that was not to be.

Thankfully, it remains close enough in the championship, so his absence won’t be too sorely felt. And hey, it means we have another driver change to look forward to!

There has been a bit of trumpeting about the BBC getting a peak audience of 2.9 million for the MotoGP from Donington Park on Sunday.

That’s about 50 percent up on the usual audience. Which is good. But it’s because it was the British Grand Prix, it was on BBC One, and it immediately followed the Formula 1.

For comparison, the Formula 1 from Hungary peaked at 5.8 million. Which is double the MotoGP.

So why is that? Well, Formula 1 is bigger than MotoGP, clearly. Is it better? That’s debatable, but I’m not going to debate it. It’s definitely promoted more, both by FOM, and by the BBC as the broadcaster.

There are complaints about that last point, and to an extent they’re justified. Comparisons are made between Eurosport’s coverage of MotoGP and the BBC’s, but that’s clearly not fair. Comparing it to the BBC’s coverage of Formula 1 is fair, however.

But parity should not be expected. Going on Sunday’s viewing figures, MotoGP is half as popular as Formula 1. So it’s probably fair that MotoGP is generally on BBC Two, while Formula 1 lives on BBC One.

The amount of coverage on standard TV is disproportionately weighted in favour of Formula 1 – qualifying and the race, both with an hour of build up, compared to the race with a bit of build up if you’re lucky for MotoGP.

But the clearest representation of the difference comes from comparing the BBC’s Formula 1 and MotoGP websites.

So yes, MotoGP is probably given too little attention by the BBC, compared to Formula 1, even taking into account their relative popularities. But really, there are bigger problems in the world.

Has there ever been a more remarkable Formula 1 qualifying session than today’s in Hungary? I missed it live, but catching up online, it’s almost unreal.

First and foremost, let’s hope that Felipe Massa has a rapid recovery. He crashed following being hit by a spring from Rubens Barrichello’s car, and has since successfully undergone surgery for a damaged skull and brain concussion. The BBC has incredible on-board footage of the incident.

That delayed the start of the final qualifying session, which finished without any sort of timing data being available. So no-one knew who had pole, and Fernando Alonso ended up walking up to all the drivers and comparing his time with theirs. Just bizarre. And, again, available to watch online, thanks to the tremendous BBC.

Anyway, Alonso is on pole, albeit in a very light car. Behind him are the two sensibly fuelled Red Bull Racing cars, one of which seems likely to win. Mind you, Lewis Hamilton is 4th on the grid and armed with KERS, so he could well be in with a shout. Though he’s mainly thrown away the decent chances he’s had so far this season, so we’ll see.

Jenson Button in 8th has the heaviest car on the grid, so maybe he knows something we don’t. But probably not, because the team spent most of the final session checking his car following Barrichello’s incident. Is this the championship slipping away from him?

Jaime Alguersuari became the youngest person to qualify for a Formula 1 race, but inevitably in last place. He had a problem with his car, so perhaps 0.4s off Robert Kubica in 19th wasn’t too bad. Sebastien Buemi, in the other Toro Rosso, qualified a decent 11th, so Alguersuari can at least be confident that he’s got an improved car.

Let’s not forget about MotoGP qualifying at Donington Park. It’s Valentino Rossi on pole, with that little Dani Pedrosa guy behind him. Having recovered from his injuries, Pedrosa really is back on form, isn’t he? Worryingly, I don’t mind. Maybe I’m warming to him.

James Toseland is down in 9th, which doesn’t seem too bad until you realise that his team-mate, Colin Edwards, is 6th. Oh dear. Still, better news for the home riders in 125cc, where Bradley Smith is on pole. A British winner in Britain two years in a row? That would be nice.

It’s been a bit of a muted week, after the tragic death of Henry Surtees, following the Formula Two race at Brand Hatch last Sunday. Aside from Jaime Alguersuari being confirmed at Toro Rosso, it’s been fairly quiet on the news front.

So let’s look forward to the weekend, when we have Formula 1 and MotoGP taking over Sunday afternoon on BBC One.

Formula 1 is in Hungary, and the question to be answered is whether Red Bull Racing is now ahead of Brawn GP outright, or whether it’s going to vary from track to track.

But the early talk, at least from the BBC lot on Twitter, is of flights and online check-in, table football, and the hot weather. Fascinating stuff.

Meanwhile, there’s MotoGP-related activity at Donington Park already, with the traditional Day of Champions in aid of the fantastic Riders for Health charity.

For Sunday’s race – the last at the track for the foreseeable future – Steve Parrish is predicting victory for Jorge Lorenzo.

I think it’s far too close to call, so I’ll just be hoping there isn’t a repeat of last year’s events. I’d be happy for another British winner in the 125cc race, but I’m not so keen for James Toseland to go off at the first corner, or for the crowd to boo the MotoGP race winner.

We’re at, approaching, or beyond halfway in the main championships I cover on these pages, so it seems like a good time to step back and assess how the year is going. My general opinion is: rather well.

There’s only one championship which is looking like a done deal, and that’s British Superbikes. After Sylvain Guintolli’s nasty crash, Leon Camier is being left largely unchallenged. With 10 wins from 12 races, and a significant lead over the second placed rider – his team-mate – it’s probably going to take an accident to keep him from the title. Cadwell Park, the scene of his horrendous crash in 2007, is still to come, but he’d be extremely unlucky to suffer the same fate twice.

One might be tempted to say that the Formula 1 title is Jenson Button’s to lose. If Brawn GP can keep up the pace, then that’s probably true, but can the team hold off Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel? I think that remains a very big question, and one which will only be answered over the remainder of the season.

Before the last three rounds, no-one would have bet against Sebastien Loeb taking yet another World Rally Championship title. But an extraordinary run of bad luck for Loeb – which is to say any bad luck at all for Loeb – has handed Mikko Hirvonen a one point lead. Loeb remains the man to beat, but – against all odds – it’s actually still quite interesting.

Noriyuki Haga was looking like a virtual certainty for the Superbike World Championship earlier in the year, but after five wins from the last six races for Ben Spies, it’s close at the top now. And with Haga injured after his crash at Donington Park, the title could be edging towards Spies.

MotoGP isn’t quite as close as it was at one point this year – when Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner were all tied on points at the top – but it’s still anybody’s championship. Rossi is the one who seems to have the momentum at this point, though after an impressive victory at Laguna Seca, even Dani Pedrosa could yet have something to say about it.

Given that the ballast regulations and so forth are engineered to ensure a close championship, there are some fairly healthy – though by no means safe – leads in the tin tops.

The World Touring Car Championship is led by reigning champion Yvan Muller, with SEAT team-mate Gabriele Tarquini 14 points behind. Augusto Farfus is a further point back, but could be one to watch, as BMW seem to be putting all their eggs in his basket now – not exactly to the delight of the other BMW drivers.

Colin Turkington has a nice 25 point cushion over Matt Neal in the British Touring Car Championship. It’s not as straight-forward as that though. Neal has been consistent, but James Thompson – who started the season late with Team Dynamics – has the second most race wins behind Turkington, despite standing only 6th overall. Jason Plato, 4th overall, has been consistently getting good results recently, so he could be a factor. And you can never count out Fabrizio Giovanardi, currently 3rd.

Enough waffle, I should name names. I’ll pick:

• British Superbikes – Leon Camier
• Formula 1 – Jenson Button
• World Rally Championship – Sebastien Loeb
• Superbike World Championship – Ben Spies
• MotoGP – Valentino Rossi
• World Touring Car Championship – Yvan Muller
• British Touring Car Championship – Colin Turkington

Not very imaginative, granted, but we’ll see how much that changes by the end of the year.

The weekend saw action from the BTCC, WRC, and MotoGP. On recent form, I would have put money on the BTCC providing the most exciting racing, but that was far from the truth.

There was a time when MotoGP practically guaranteed close, exciting racing. That’s not been the case for a while, and detractors have enjoyed pointing out that not since 2006 have we seen a rider overtake for the win on the last lap.

That drought ended in emphatic fashion on Sunday in Catalunya, with a quite stunning climax to the race, Valentino Rossi ultimately triumphing over Jorge Lorenzo after the pair fought magnificently to the line. It has to be seen.

Almost as remarkably, the result leaves Rossi, Lorenzo and Stoner tied on 106 points at the top of the championship.

The World Rally Championship is looking close now too, with Mikko Hirvonen’s victory closing the gap to Sebastien Loeb to just 7 points. That’s because Loeb crashed out spectacularly. Again, it has to be seen.

I was slightly traumatised to see that the guest on Dave’s coverage of the rally was going to be Ben Shepherd. But, contrary to expectations, he was by a country mile the best guest they’ve had. He was a lot of fun and – being a presenter himself – utterly relaxed chatting away in front of the camera.

It was left to the BTCC to disappoint. The first two races were completely dominated by the Team RAC BMWs, and the third was plagued by safety car periods, thanks to cars skating off the track in the wet conditions.

A quick word about ITV4’s Le Mans 24 Hour coverage. The last half hour of the race in the middle of the BTCC broadcast was a bit dull, but the podium is always a thing of joy at Le Mans. The hour and a bit of live coverage before the BTCC, however, was surprisingly worthwhile – it managed to cover the progress of the most important entrants, and many of the issues surrounding the race. Well done to the commentators – John Hindhaugh and Graham Goodwin.