Italian Valentino Rossi won the MotoGP world championship for the fifth year in a row on Sunday after finishing second in the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Rossi, finishing behind compatriot Loris Capirossi's Ducati, joins Giacomo Agostini and Mick Doohan as the only riders to have won the premier class of grand prix racing five times or more.
Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "7", the number of world championships he has won in all classes, the flamboyant 26-year-old said this year's championship was a difficult quest.
"Last year was more of a surprise," he said, explaining that his switch at the end of 2003 from Honda to Yamaha, then seen as the inferior bike, had lifted the burden of expectation in 2004.
"This year, all of the other riders want to beat me and try 100 percent," he told reporters after performing a victory lap in a helmet also painted with a large "7".
Rossi needed to finish within 12 points of Max Biaggi, another Italian, to take the championship. Biaggi, on a Honda, finished sixth, leaving him just 17 points ahead of Capirossi and with an increasingly desperate battle to hang on to second.
Spaniard Carlos Checa took third, giving Ducati two places on the podium and a boost for the manufacturers. They have now won two races back-to-back under Capirossi, and appear to have worked out a winning combination of machine and tyre with Bridgestone.
Rossi and pole-starter Capirossi played cat-and-mouse at the halfway stage, with Rossi flirting with danger and grabbing the lead twice before Capirossi snatched it back and held it.
With three laps to go, it looked like Rossi, who crashed out of the Motegi grand prix in Japan a week ago, was thinking of the championship rather than the race and he did not threaten again.
Rossi said later that Capirossi's Ducati was unassailable on a baking-hot Sepang circuit.
"For sure, I try," he said. "For three corners, he played with me like a cat and a mouse, so I say, okay, see you next time."
FIRST ATTEMPT
Rossi, Italy's most sought-after sportsman, won the 125cc title in 1997, the 250cc crown in 1999 and was the last 500cc world champion in 2001 with Honda.
He won the first two MotoGP titles with Honda before making the dramatic switch to Yamaha and winning the title again at his first attempt on the previously uncompetitive M1 bike.
His seventh title in all classes equals the career totals accumulated by Britons Phil Read and John Surtees with only Agostini (15), Spain's Angel Nieto (13), Briton Mike Hailwood and Italian Carlo Ubbiali (both nine) having won more.
Rossi's run of five successive premier titles matches Australian Doohan's feat from 1994 to 1998 although both riders trail behind Italian Agostini's seven in a row from 1966 to 1972.
Such is Rossi's domination of the top class of grand prix -- he has won 51 of 93 races since he moved up from the 250cc class in 2000 -- that there is no doubt he could equal Agostini's tally.
However Rossi is contracted to Yamaha only until the end of next season and has had two tests in a Formula One car with Ferrari this year, with more planned for next.
He has said he has made no plans for 2007 but has not ruled out moving to four wheels in an attempt to emulate Surtees, the only man to have won the top prize in motorcycling and the Formula One world title.
Honda had a meagre day at Sepang with one podium finish.
Their top two hopefuls for the 250cc championship, Spaniard Daniel Pedrosa and Italy's Andrea Dovizioso, skidded off the track, allowing Australian Casey Stoner's Aprilia to cruise to victory and build a dangerous challenge for the championship, currently led by defending title-holder Pedrosa.
Alex de Angelis, of San Marino, and Argentine Sebastian Porto took second and third, both also riding Aprilia.
In the 125cc class, Swiss teenager Thomas Luthi extended his narrow championship lead with a razor-thin win over his main rival, Finland's Mika Kallio.
The pair, alternate winners of the last four races, duelled up front for the last half of the race, with the 19-year-old Luthi's Honda holding off Kallio's final lunge for the chequered flag to win with a margin of just 0.002 seconds.
Italian Mattia Pasini, on an Aprilia, finished almost 10 seconds adrift of Kallio's KTM.