Outside the top six riders, and interesting battle was starting to develop in the mid-field, with
Randy de Puniet, Makoda Tamada, Shinji Nakano, Carlos Checa, Roger Lee Hayden,
Anthony West and Alex Barros running in close proximity in positions seven through to 13, while further down the pack, debutants Chaz Davies and Miguel Duhamel found themselves fighting with
Nicky Hayden as the Respol man struggled down in 16th place on his damaged Honda following his lap one incident. Hopkins meanwhile had pitted at the end of lap one but had resumed racing on home soil but two laps down at the back of the field.
As Stoner continued to eek out his advantage over Vermeulen, the man on a move was Melandri, who was making his light of his injuries to fight Edwards for fifth. Despite the American doing all he could to keep the Gresini rider behind him. Melandri swept by on lap five and quickly set off in pursuit of fourth placed Rossi.
Within three laps, Melandri had caught onto the tail of his countryman, and on lap eight took fourth – with an unlikely trip to the podium drawing ever closer.
Stoner continued to lead heading into the second third of the race, with Vermeulen starting to slip back after initially maintaining his gap the leader, while Pedrosa in third had started to slip back from the front two and was starting to come under pressure from Melandri. Rossi was fifth ahead of Edwards, with de Puniet, Tamada, Nakano and West rounding out the top ten. Hayden meanwhile was now clearly in big trouble, with the champion lapping some three seconds slower than the rest of the field and ahead of only Hopkins on the timing screens.
While the gap between first and second continued to grow, so the gap between third and fourth dropped, and by lap 14, the Gresini Honda was less than half a second behind Pedrosa's factory machine. For the following two laps, Melandri inched closer to the Spaniard and, having made an unsuccessful attempt to take third at the Corkscrew, Melandri made his move stick into turn ten to go into a podium place.
