Pedrosa lauds 'unbelievable' podium

Pedrosa, who started second on the grid alongside countryman Jorge Lorenzo, made a perfect getaway to lead into the first corner, and held the advantage until Valentino Rossi passed him into the Angel Nieto corner with 11 laps remaining.

"I really wanted to win, but I knew it would be very difficult because Valentino was already very fast on Friday. So I just tried to do my race and see what the result was at the end," he said.

"Coming from all those problems we had [over the winter], it's still unbelievable for me to be on the podium. My race was very good and I'm happy."

Pedrosa believes that Rossi's victory was no surprise, despite the Italian qualifying his Yamaha on the second row.

"Maybe he was going slowly to try and not make other people see how fast he was," added Pedrosa, who moved up from fifth to equal third in the world championship as a result of his podium finish - 24 points behind Rossi.