Lorenzo, on pole for his first two MotoGP events, gave Hopkins some 'hand signals' after believing that the Kawasaki rider was planning to tuck in behind him to set a fast lap time.

Hopper, who claims he had simply been letting the Fiat Yamaha rider past, then lost his own temper and is thought to have reacted by pulling alongside Lorenzo and grabbing his helmet.

Speaking at Estoril, venue for this weekend's Portuguese Grand Prix, Hopkins described it as a 'racing incident' - but hopes Lorenzo will apologise.

"I guess he just misunderstood me as I was letting him go on a cool down lap and he came out, I think he thought I was going to try and follow him and get a [quick] lap time," the official MotoGP website reports Hopkins as saying.

"But he got a bit hot-headed and used some naughty gestures and once I saw that I got a bit hot-headed myself, so we had a lap of fury!

"There's a lot of testosterone out there when you are on track, and you can get hot-tempered. I hope he apologises but other than that everything is ok. It was just a racing incident," said John.

Meanwhile, Hopkins had his first ride with the new Kawasaki screamer engine during the Monday test, and was impressed by the shrieking even-firing powerplant.

"The new bike is definitely going to be a milestone in racing," he claimed. "It's an exciting bike and an exciting engine, though there are a lot of improvements we need to make before it is race ready.

"It sounds really good and they are working really hard on it in Japan, so we hope to be racing it before the year is out," he revealed.

Hopkins, who injured his groin during pre-season testing, has finished twelfth and seventh in his first two races on the ZX-RR.