At the Qatar race, their previously good-natured rivalry spilled over, as Rossi accused Gibernau of pressuring officials to disqualify his qualifying result for allegedly later tampering with the track patch from which he started, to get better grip off an unusually dusty surface. However, it was Gibernau's team, not Gibernau himself, who had noticed the track alteration and asked race organisers to investigate. The security camera tapes showed Rossi's team tampering with the track, doing extended burnouts on his starting zone which embedded rubber across it and provided better grip. Because of this, race organisers penalised Rossi, as well as Biaggi, and moved them both to the back of the grid. At the start, Gibernau overtook polesitter Carlos Checa into turn one on the opening lap, who then increased the gap to +3.290 seconds by lap eight. On lap six however, Rossi crashed out of contention when he ran wide onto the grass and lost the rear in the process. After Rossi's retirement, Gresini Honda teammate Edwards overtook midway through lap nine and went on to chase Gibernau. By lap thirteen, he was less than two seconds away from Gibernau, who responded by going even quicker and thus stabilising his lead. With four laps to go, Edwards once again tried to close in on Gibernau - closing the gap from 2 to 1.6 seconds in one lap - but Gibernau once again responded by upping the pace to extend the gap to 2 seconds once again. Gibernau crossed the line +1.315 seconds ahead of Colin Edwards to win the inaugural race. Gibernau was now only 14 points behind Rossi in the championship standings with just three races to go.