Stoner admits to struggling with heat

Apart from a brief moment when Dani Pedrosa slipped in front on the opening lap, Stoner was never headed during the 21-lap race, but he could not afford to relax as Pedrosa, Marco Melandri and Randy de Puniet remained close behind throughout.

"The biggest battle I had was being in front by myself and not really having anything to focus on," said the world champion. "I've been fine with it all year, but this track seems to just take it out of you a little bit more."

He admitted to making several errors in the second half of the race as the conditions began to take their toll.

"Probably until halfway through the race everything was performing very well, then I had a couple of front end loses - on one I came very close to coming off," Stoner said.

"So then I just tried to back it off and keep a similar pace but with some different lines and different riding techniques.

"I managed to do it but I made a few mistakes in the process. Some laps when I decided just to back off a little bit, I backed off too much and gave them a bit of an advantage so I had to increase the pace again.

"As I crossed the line I started to feel a bit dizzy, so it was definitely a hard race, and a win I'm going to enjoy, I think."

The result made Stoner the first person to win at Sepang in all three MotoGP classes, as he had also claimed victory at the track in 125s in 2004 and 250s a year later.