Hayden content with third

The world champion had qualified a season-best second, and admitted after the race that he had been confident of beating polesitter Casey Stoner off the line. Instead he fell to fourth by the first corner.

"I am not happy about my start," Hayden told the BBC. "With the starts I had been getting lately I was confident I would lead into Turn 1."

He quickly repassed teammate Dani Pedrosa for third, but was then unable to keep pace with Casey Stoner and John Hopkins.

"When we got into third I thought 'okay, I'm going' and for about three or four corners I thought 'alright, I'm catching them' and then I got on the straight and thought 'no, this isn't going to be pretty,'" Hayden said.

"But we got into position and rode hard until the end."

He said he was pleased with his own performance, although he hoped Repsol Honda would have made more progress during the weekend.

"We want to be winning, but I really feel like I got the maximum out of the package, the bike and the tyres and did everything we could today," Hayden said.

"So I'm not too bummed out with the result.

"We did find a few things over the weekend with the fork setting that I liked better, but it still wasn't enough to go with the leaders."