"In morning Warm Up on Sunday I again ran in pistons and got as feel for the bike with a full tank of fuel. It was a bit more unstable on heavy braking because of the extra fuel weight so we added pre-load to the front forks which stiffens up the front suspension slightly and made it slightly better. I again did another practice start which was 3.3 seconds and so far out of 7 starts my worst had been 3.5 seconds so things were looking good for the race.
"Before the race I ran through my head exactly what I needed to do in the opening laps. Get a good start, if there’s a gap go for it because the first 3 laps are always half the battle and if you get stuck behind riders who you know you are faster than it can mess up the whole race as I had found out in the previous races.
"I made 3 places off the line up to 15th, then by the second sector I was up to 14th, then I passed Faubel up to 13th. In the final sector Roby Rolfo high-sided and took out Ant West and made De Puniet go wide so I was up to 10th and just off the back of Battaini and Marchand with a slight gap to Nieto and Debon.
"After 5 laps I was a few seconds behind Debon and Nieto but starting to catch them slightly. On lap 8 I passed Battaini up to 8th and the next lap he passed me back. Just ahead of us Debon crashed and Nieto made a slight mistake and he started coming quite clear. As soon as Battaini thought he could catch Nieto he put the hammer down and I had a few small moments with rear slipping sideways trying to hang on to him.
"For the last 10 laps me and Marchand had a good scrap which I really enjoyed. I felt I was faster than him but he had a bit more acceleration than me which was making quite a difference on the exit to the back straight and the start finish straight. In the last 5 laps we had a really good fight where we touched a few times and were both doing hard but fair moves on each other.
