Hopkins unhurt in big accident

The American's Kawasaki developed a problem with its quickshifter and, unable to slow down quickly enough, Hopkins went straight on at turn one and crashed.

"I couldn't backshift," he said. "With no way to scrub off speed, the crash was inevitable. It was a big one and I count myself lucky that I managed to walk away uninjured.

"I'm frustrated because this is the second time in a row that a technical problem has put me out of the race, it can't be allowed to happen again."

Hopkins had been confident of a strong result after a gamble on set-up found some time in the warm-up. He had previously been fastest in wet practice, only to fall off the pace in qualifying.

"We saw in qualifying that we were some way off the pace in race trim, so we took a chance with some fairly big changes ahead of the warm-up," he said." It paid off because the set-up was much improved in the seven laps of the race before the problem."

The retirement was Hopkins' second in a row and he has now dropped to 12th in the championship.