In fact, Marco and Nicky ran 1-2 for the entire 30-lap contest, with the Team Movistar Honda ace clearing the stripe a scant 0.097 second ahead of the Kentucky Kid and his Repsol Honda RC211V. It was Melandri’s second straight win, and marked a blazing finish to a tough, grueling year for both riders — and bodes extremely well for 2006.

“This is like a dream come true,” gushed Melandri, whose win also helped him lock up second place in the championship standings with 220 points. “In my best dream I couldn’t imagine a day like that, win the race and finish second in the championship.” Nicky wrapped his season a very impressive third in the series with 206 points.

In the race itself, the action was pretty much a two-man show from the green light as Melandri took the holeshot into turn one and never looked back, despite the relentless intentions of Hayden, who tried everything to squeeze past him on a track where overtaking is notoriously tricky.

Thirty laps on this claustrophobic Valencia track are hard work, and riders hardly get a chance to “relax” at any point on the 4.005km (2.488-mile) course. And it was Melandri who showed a super-strong will to win by denying victory to Hayden — another Honda man hungry to rack up his second win of the season.

Melandri and Hayden were joined up front by fellow Honda rider Sete Gibernau (Team Movistar Honda) in the early running, with Sete setting an early fastest lap of the race at 1:33:476. But on lap four, the Spaniard was forced out of contention with machine trouble, ending a luckless year without scoring a single win.

Rossi started from 15th on the grid after crashing in the previous day’s qualifying session, and he had made his way up to third by lap six. By then, however, Melandri and Hayden were long gone, and although Rossi did manage to shave their six-second gap to just under three seconds by the flag, he never posed a threat to the leading pair.

Nor did Carlos Checa after holding fourth for much of the race. The Spanish rider finished in that position more than 18 seconds down on the leaders.

Melandri and Hayden, in fact, were so totally in charge of the day’s events that Marco even dropped the pace mid-race in hopes of encouraging Nicky to take a stint at the front.

But when Hayden couldn’t make it past the Italian on the tight, technical Valencia circuit, Melandri deduced that if Hayden couldn’t pass him, then he too was unlikely to be able to re-pass the American for the win. At this point, Melandri decided to put his head down and hang on to the flag for the win.

Nicky had one shot at getting by the #33 Honda RC211V, and it came in the final corner on the final lap when Melandri bobbled early in the downhill left-hander.

“When we came over that hill he got pretty sideways, and I was going to the inside," Hayden recalled, "but once he got sideways he really went to the inside to block it, so I kind of abandoned that plan and went to plan B and thought maybe he’s going to go up the inside too much and I swung out and just was going to try to get a really good drive and beat him to the line.” But Nicky wasn’t close enough to strike and came up 0.097 seconds short.

Camel Honda’s Alex Barros rode a spirited race to finish fifth ahead of Repsol Honda’s Max Biaggi in sixth. Those two had a race-long battle with Loris Capirossi, with Capirossi crossing the line in seventh.

Konica Minolta Honda’s Makoto Tamada was ninth and Ryuichi Kiyonari, standing in for the injured Troy Bayliss on the Camel Honda RC211V, finished 12th.

“This is a great moment for me,” said Marco later. “I got into turn one and got into a rhythm, but I knew Nicky was always behind. I tried to break him, but he was too strong, so then I tried to force him past me. But when he couldn’t do that I just went from there to win.”

“That was good racing!” beamed Hayden after his second straight near-miss at victory. “It was always going to be tight here, but once I loosened up I felt confident. I was always looking to stick the nose of the bike ahead, but Marco always had things covered up. My win at Laguna was huge, and it would have been nice to have made it two wins. But we’re ready for next year right now!”

And if these last two rounds are any indication of what’s in store for next season, then guess what, Nicky? So are we, so are we.

FIM World MotoGP Championship Series, Rd. 17 Results
1. Marco Melandri – Honda
2. Nicky Hayden – Honda
3. Valentino Rossi – Yamaha
4. Carlos Checa – Ducati
5. Alex Barros – Honda
6. Max Biaggi – Honda
7. Loris Capirossi – Ducati
8. Colin Edwards – Yamaha
9. Makoto Tamada – Honda
10. Toni Elias – Yamaha