WORLD champion Michael Doohan won yesterday's Imola 500cc Grand Prix which was brought to a premature end by heavy rain.

The downpour meant the 500th Grand Prix was called to a halt on the 17th lap, bringing to an end a gripping wheel-to-wheel battle between the Australian and Honda team-mate Alex Criville.

Young Spaniard Criville had taken the previous two Grand Prix races and was just 0.104 of a second behind Doohan on the 16th lap, which counted as the final result.

Race rules state that a Grand Prix must be two-thirds completed before a victory can be given, with the results being counted from the lap before the stoppage. Otherwise, the race is restarted with wet tyres.

Yesterday's race was supposed to have been over 24 laps the race would have had to restart, had the downpour arrived one lap earlier.

"Even before it started I was worried about the clouds coming," said Doohan. "I had heard it was raining in Milan and the wind started to blow five laps before the stop.

I'm sure that it was blowing Alex around a lot because it was blowing me about quite a bit."

The result left Doohan 57 points clear of Criville in the championship with just three races left.

Doohan, whose qualifying time on Friday gave him pole position, led the race from start to finish. Criville, who had to start on the second row after a high-speed fall in qualifying, snatched third place at the green light and swiftly moved up into Doohan's slipstream on the second lap by overtaking Japan's Tadayuki Okada.

Okada, in the same team as the two leaders but on a different bike, was third at the end while France's Jean-Michel Bayle was fourth - his best placing in his first season.

"We were getting faster and faster," said Doohan, who predicted an even closer race if it had continued.

The 125cc championship also tightened when overall leader Haruchika Aoki went out on the 15th lap, with compatriot Masaki Tokudome winning and cutting Aoki's lead to three points. There are three races remaining this season.