Britain's Cal Crutchlow battled to his second career MotoGP podium at Phillip Island today, giving himself an early birthday present but not getting too close to Yamaha teamster Jorge Lorenzo for fear of upsetting his title charge.

The Monster Yamaha man got the hammer down after eight laps and comfortably streaked away from the chasing trio of Stefan Bradl, Andrea Dovizioso and Alvaro Bautista.

At the end of lap eight he had pulled a 1.050s advantage over Dovizioso, but just four laps later his red-hot pace had seen him establish a gap of more than 3.5s.

"It's nice to finally end these three weeks with a podium, I think we deserved it after Motegi where we could have, at least, battled for the podium and finished fourth at worst. Obviously, last week was disappointing and I picked up bronchitis and a fever earlier this week, so I think we did a good job," said Crutchlow, speaking after the race.

"I believed that in the race I could have gone a little quicker if I needed to but I couldn't work out whether Jorge had won the title or not and I thought that if I went with him, he hadn't won it and something happens like I wiped him out I would be sacked so I left it.

"It was a good race, I finished third and kept a good gap to the guys behind me. It was a shame that Dani crash as it was going to be a good fight. Casey rode phenomenally and showed he why he is the fastest guy in the world."