The 

2003 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season was the 55th F.I.M. Road racing World

Championship season. The season consisted of 16 races, beginning with the Japanese motorcycle
Grand Prix on 6 April 2003 and ending with the Valencian Community motorcycle Grand Prix on 2
November.
Defending champion Valentino Rossi won his 3rd MotoGP championship in 2003, winning 9 races,
highlighted by his win at Phillip Island where he was given a 10-second penalty for passing under a
yellow flag and he overcame the penalty by winning the race with more than 10 seconds in hand.
Rossi had become dissatisfied with his relationship with the Honda Racing Corporation[1] and as the
season progressed and HRC tried to get Rossi to sign a new contract, Rossi demurred until finally
announcing at the end of the year that he would be leaving Honda. He soon signed
with Yamaha and took Jeremy Burgess with him to be his crew chief.
The season was marred by Daijiro Kato being killed at the first round at Suzuka. He lost control of
his motorcycle on the approach to the Casio Triangle and hit a barrier at high speed. His heart was
restarted by track paramedics, but he did not wake from a coma and died 2 weeks later. Controversy
arose because the race was not red-flagged to allow Kato to be removed from the track with
maximum care.[2] Suzuka has since been removed from the MotoGP calendar. Teammate Sete
Gibernau would inherit Kato's factory-spec RC211V.
MotoGP rookies for 2003 included Nicky Hayden (Rookie of the Year), Troy Bayliss, Marco
Melandri and Colin Edwards. A new constructor also arrived: Ducati. After much success
in Superbike racing, Ducati returned to the premier-class of GP with their GP3. It made an
immediate impression with its raw speed, and they finished the constructor's championship in
second place, ahead of Yamaha and behind Honda.