“Now I just want to focus on each race and get the best results possible. There's a long way to go in the championship but there's also a big gap to the leaders so I'm just going to take it one race at a time,” he declared.

Repsol Honda team manager Kazuhiko Yamano had been counting the days since the team's last victory and is determined to build on Sunday's result.

“Dani did a fantastic job today. It has been 382 days since Honda last won a MotoGP race, and this result shows that the factory Repsol Honda Team can still be a force to be reckoned with,” he said.

“Dani has had a very difficult start to 2009, with injury interfering with the winter testing programme and then with more bad luck and injuries in the early races. But now we can put that behind us and use this victory to move forward.

“Far from relaxing now, the Repsol Honda Team is going to work even harder to repeat this kind of success. There is still a gap to some of our rivals and there are many strong riders in MotoGP, but Honda will never give up and I'm determined that today is just the start.”

Pedrosa's team-mate Andrea Dovizioso crashed out of fourth place for the second race in succession.