West eleventh, Hopkins fourteenth in Indy rain

With their modest grid positions and a battle against the elements on their hands, Kawasaki´s Anthony West and John Hopkins could not breach the top ten in the red-flagged first ever MotoGP brickyard contest, despite West´s well-renowned wet riding skills.

Anthony West - eleventh

`I´m actually really disappointed because I was sure we could have achieved a much better result in the wet today. The track was cleared of standing water before the beginning of the race, and because I was so far back I had to really push hard to make up positions in the opening few laps. We got up to tenth place and I really felt we were capable of catching the riders ahead, but as the weather deteriorated so did the grip level left in my tyre, as I´d worked it so hard in the beginning, and we couldn´t push any harder towards the end. From dead last on the grid eleventh isn´t so bad, and given the weather we were up against, at least we were able to fight for what nearly was a top ten place.´

John Hopkins - fourteenth

`Warm-up this morning was dry and then the weather deteriorated not long before the race. We got a really good start, and we ran a fairly hard compound rear tyre as we thought a dry line might appear before the end of the race. This took a while to get up to temperature, so I rode quite steadily in the opening laps and unfortunately lost a few places. We got into a good rhythm and our lap times were good, but then the weather rapidly got worse. The rain we could deal with, but the wind was unbelievable, which made it hard to get the bike to change direction. There was a lot of debris all over the track and then the race was red-flagged. Overall fourteenth is certainly not where we wanted to finish, but in the dry we definitely made some improvements during qualifying and I hope we can put these to good use next time out in Japan.´