From second on the grid – his highest qualifying position of the 2007 season so far – Nicky Hayden was squeezed back to fourth into the first corner as Casey Stoner took the lead from pole position, followed by Dani Pedrosa in second and John Hopkins in third. A hard-charging Nicky Hayden overtook his team-mate on lap two and set off in pursuit of John Hopkins who had managed to get past Pedrosa on the opening lap.

For a while it looked like the MotoGP World Champion might be able to challenge the leaders as he rode his RC212V to the maximum, but it soon became clear that the 26-year-old American couldn’t quite match the pace of the front pair and Nicky Hayden settled for his third podium finish of the season to continue his recent run of form.

Nicky Hayden

“Well I’m pretty happy with the podium and I feel like we’ve done a decent job this weekend. Yesterday afternoon we made quite a big change with the front forks and I liked the results a lot.

When I got into third position on lap two of the race I was thinking ‘now you’ve got to get on his back wheel’ and for about three corners it was looking pretty good. But then I got onto the straight, looked up and realised that really I was just dreaming. So I just kept my rhythm and I really feel like I got the best out of the bike, myself and the tyres today – I don’t feel like I left much on the table.

So thanks to my team because those guys did a good job. Hopefully we can keep this form going and get a little bit stronger from now on. I’d also like to dedicate this podium to Cedric Laprael, the parts guy in the Repsol Honda Team, who isn’t here this weekend because he had a parachuting accident during the summer break. Get well Cedric.

The team’s going to stay for a couple of days testing with some new parts from Honda and a lot of Michelin tyres so we can to try and bridge the gap to these front guys.”