Stoner complains about Rossi's overtaking

The reigning champion, who was on a three-race winning streak coming into the US Grand Prix, was fighting wheel-to-wheel with Rossi for the majority of the race.

The pair passed and re-passed each other several times before Stoner slid wide while following Rossi under braking for the last corner with eight laps to go, and dropped the bike as he ran wide on the exit.

He got back on in plenty of time to finish second, but felt that Rossi's overtaking moves throughout the first half of the race were 'too much'.

"For me, some of the overtaking manouvres were not correct," he told Italia1 television. "I'm a little disappointed because if I do something like this then for sure I get a penalty. I've had some very hard racing in my career, some very aggressive racing, but not dirty. For me, today was a little bit too much.

"Valentino rode a fantastic race, there's no taking that away from him," he added. "But, for me, some of the moves, not all of them, but some of them, were too much. I was very close to crashing and this is the point where it goes past aggressive and fair racing.

"Up until today I've been very happy with the way everybody rides at the front of the MotoGP field. Everybody's passes are very clean, sometimes aggressive, but this is ok. For me, today was a little bit past this point and a few times I was fearing crashing."

But Stoner admitted that the mistake that led to his fall was his own doing.

"When I ran off the track it was completely my fault, nothing else," he added. "I made a mistake when I was trying to come back on. I don't know what happened, I didn't touch the front brake. The sand was very thick and I just made a small mistake.

"It's a shame because the race was good, the bike felt quite good and the conditions were getting warmer, although the rear was sliding around quite a lot.

"But we got second place, and also second in the championship. We have a lot of races left and we're very happy with the performances since Mugello. We've been consistently on the podium so we have to be happy with this. It didn't work out perfectly today but we'll come back next time and see what we can do."