Factory Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo rode to an incredible fifth place in yesterday's Assen MotoGP race just 48 hours after breaking his collarbone and 24 hours after having a plate and eight screws inserted.

He flew back from surgery in Barcelona, landed in Holland mid-way through Friday afternoon, passed one medical to ride in warm-up where he was in pain and then another to race. And some people had the temerity to say he was crazy...

"A lot of people say to me I am crazy, but I am not crazy. When I see that I could race, I try. For sure, this was the most difficult, the most challenging race because Assen is very complicated. There is no long straight to relax all the muscles. It's always change direction at a high speed," said Lorenzo, speaking at Assen.

"It is very difficult to overtake the other riders. I was brave to overtake the other riders in the first laps. I couldn't do any pushups on the ground and in warm-up the first two laps were hard but better when I got warm. The middle of the race to the end was very hard, I couldn't do any more to finish the race.

"It would have been impossible to believe some minutes after my crash that this could happen. We were brave to make the operation the same day, if I had waited to Friday the doctors would not have let me race. I felt quite good physically at the beginning of the race but after lap seven every lap was worse; it was more difficult to change direction, to brake and to accelerate so I couldn't do more than fifth position.

"We only lost two points to Dani who is leading the Championship. This fifth position is better than any victory I have had in my career. I hope to have a good recovery for Germany, I will not be 100 per cent but I hope to be better than here."