Pedrosa worried about foot injury

The Spaniard fears that he broke a bone when he tumbled from his Repsol Honda on what should have been his in-lap.

"The more worrying thing for me right now is that it feels like I have broken a bone in my left foot," Pedrosa said.

"I will have more x-rays and really hope I'm fit for the next race in Australia."

Pedrosa, who led from pole initially before falling back to fifth place, stayed out longer on wet tyres than all bar Valentino Rossi. He was due to pit on the lap of his crash.

"I don't really know what happened, the back just snapped around even before I had given any throttle," he said. "With hindsight, perhaps I should have come into the pits a little earlier, but that's an easier call to make now than at the time."

Team boss Makoto Tanaka said that in future Honda might over-rule their riders' decisions in similar situations and insist on pit stops.

"Before the race it was decided with Dani that the timing of the bike change would be the rider's choice," he said.

"It was unfortunate that he crashed just before coming in and I think in the same circumstances we would bring him in earlier next time."

Pedrosa's teammate Nicky Hayden finished ninth, having lost a lot of ground in the opening laps.

"As soon as we started the race, basically after one lap, we're not sure what happened - whether it was the tyre or something electronic - but the bike became very difficult to ride and I just went backwards," Hayden said.

"I think I was the first one to come in and the track was still pretty wet but I needed to come in and switch bikes. Luckily for me the track started to dry pretty fast and after a few slow laps I was able to get rolling.

"Really I think we're lucky to salvage some kind of result out of the day - if it had stayed wet we could have been in even more trouble."