De Puniet frustrated by retirement

After successfully managing to keep Fiat Yamaha's Valentino Rossi behind for a couple of laps, until the Italian slid off the track when attempting overtake de Puniet for sixth place, the Frenchman had a good race before parking his Ninja ZX-RR on the front straight.

"I don't know what happened," he explained. "The engine started to play up in the last two laps I did but I don't know what the problem was.

"Before that, in the middle of the race, I got a lot of movement in the front tyre, which is why my lap times weren't that good. It was difficult to control the bike but I was just trying to keep my place.

"Then, about ten laps in, the rear started to slide a lot, on entry, the middle of the bends and on the exit but even then, I still felt it was possible to finish.

"I had to retire just after I crossed the line, two laps from the end and I'm obviously very disappointed about that."

De Puniet's retirement enabled teammate Anthony West to reach his objective of improving on his best-ever finish. The Australian inherited eighth place, beating his previous best of ninth place.

"I'm really happy with this result as I wanted to keep making a step forward at every round and it's worked out this weekend," said West. "It was tough, though. A lot of people crashed and grip on the track wasn't too good, because of the heat I think, which meant I couldn't push as hard as I wanted to.

"I followed (Nicky) Hayden for a while, and he pulled me towards (Colin) Edwards before he overtook him, but then I nearly crashed. I lost the front end going in to turn five, managed to pick the bike up on my knee and was lucky to stay on.

"That dropped me back a bit, and I tried to catch Colin, but I needed to conserve the tyres, even though I wanted to go faster. I wasn't sure they'd last the race but they did, so I'm pleased I finished and I'm happy with my position."