From that point onwards, the top three would be safe in their positions as Stoner gradually pulled away from Vermeulen, who in turn had a comfortable advantage over Melandri – meaning the focus turned to the battles further down the field.
Perhaps key amongst those battles was the fight for fourth, with Rossi keen to get as high as possible to minimise his points loss to Stoner heading into near month-long break before the Czech GP at Brno.
Having been unable to keep touch with the front-runners, Rossi was able to close on Pedrosa and made his move at the final turn to take fourth on lap 20, then pulling away from Pedrosa to secure the place with the Repsol rider settling for fifth.
The battle for sixth was also hotting up nicely, with a train of riders having queued up behind Edwards who was starting to slip down the order.
On lap 24, the American lost sixth place to de Puniet and by the time the field came round again, the ‘Texas Tornado' liveried Honda had lost two more places, with Tamada and West having demoted the home rider to ninth place – West having earlier slipped past Nakano in the mid-field battle. Nakano had then lost further places, with Roger Lee Hayden and Alex Barros having got ahead of him in the train.
By this point, Kurtis Roberts, Duhamel and Hayden had all joined Capirossi in retirement while Davies had lost time in the pits with a broken sprocket and was now running with Hopkins, two laps behind the rest of the field.
