Warwick Nowland: "During the night, I caught and passed Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha Austria. I remember at 7am on Sunday morning my lap times were very fast and I thought we should be making in-roads but for some reason we weren't. It's frustrating when you are as fast or faster, and you are passing the opposition on the track but not catching them!

"I started thinking, oh dear, not third again at Oschersleben… But that looked to be the case until I started to get a strange feeling from the clutch. One lap later I had no clutch pressure and then it got noisy. The nut that holds the clutch basket onto the gearbox shaft had come loose. Basically, the clutch came away from the gearbox. The team replaced the nut and put a new clutch in as well. I went back out but I was back in within a lap. The new clutch was slipping.

"Once that was fixed, we had dropped to tenth place and I still had hope of getting back to fifth or maybe fourth place. Around seven or eight laps later, the bike lost power and the next lap there was a bad noise. I came back to the pits knowing very well this time was the last. When the clutch came away from the gearbox, the oil pump drive was disturbed and that caused a crankshaft failure.

"It's sad for the whole team and really has finished our championship fight. I have to thank everyone for trying their best, especially my team mates. It's a tough circuit on the body. Congratulations to the winners, they weren't the fastest on the track but the package was the best."