Britain's Cal Crutchlow surrendered his MotoGP series lead at Austin with a crash halfway through the race but he said he is now chasing podiums not sixth places as he has the pace to challenge for the championship in 2018.
"I'm not a sixth-place rider this year. It's as simple as that. So I'm not going to settle for sixth. I was nowhere near a sixth-place rider today. I was fast enough to be second," insisted Crutchlow.
"I suppose it's great for the team to be leading the world title and finishing races, but I'm a racer and you need to understand when someone is in front of you and they are going slower than you can go, I'm not going to ride around behind them. If you chase podiums then the championship will come.
"In Qatar I finished fourth but I was chasing a podium. In Argentina I won, but I knew I could win. Here I thought it would be difficult to win, but I thought it would be quite easy to be on the podium.
"So I think we can go to Jerez very positive. We know the factory boys have tested there which is going to make that quite difficult to be as competitive, they’ve tested there on this year's bike with the parts that they’ve got."
The Isle of Man resident went down after running wide twice at turn 12 and said he was overheating the front tyre in his attempts to pass Johann Zarco and get after the front four.
"I needed to pass. Because I was faster than them, I am not going to ride around behind them," Crutchlow said. I needed to clear Zarco and go because [the top four] were not really extending their gap ahead of me, so I knew I could go across quite easily.
"I had not enough front grip. I was braking deep and not stopping the bike, overheating the rubber on the front tyre. Honestly, I don’t think we set the bike up well enough for the braking zones. But it's a compromise because if I was riding alone, like after I crashed, I had no problem in the braking zones. I didn’t miss one apex.
"It's when you get sucked along in the slipstream and in the braking zone you're behind people that you don’t decelerate well. The mistake in the last corner, I was actually trying to square the bike up so I could have a run at Johann into turn one and as I leant at the last moment I opened the throttle and closed the front."