Barros relieved to avoid accident

The Pramac D'Antin Ducati rider was almost collected as Olivier Jacque tangled with Colin Edwards, Dani Pedrosa and Chris Vermeulen at Turn 12.

"It was close enough to see the numbers and the details on the tyres..." he told autosport.com.

"It was tight. I just saw this group push inside. At that moment I already thought it was too dangerous. I wasn't going to fight like that for sixth position.

"I almost came off the track, I was on the white line. After that I lost a lot of distance, Melandri passed and I had a lot of ground to recover."

Barros managed to rejoin the large battle for the podium positions only just lost third place to Loris Capirossi after changing places with the Italian twice on the final lap.

"I know I am quicker than him in the fast corner (Turn 11), because everyone else uses fifth and I use sixth," Capirossi told autosport.com. "But today we had wind. On the last lap, I tried to do that corner almost full throttle, and I lost the front.

"I went wide, and the bike started to shake a lot. When it started to shake, I didn't want to close the throttle, but Alex overtook me.

"So I said okay, at the last corner I will try again, and it was very good for me."