With Gibernau becoming more and more comfortable with the conditions, he set fastest lap after fastest lap and increased his gap to 3.5 seconds on lap 10. With Checa—who had fought his way back up to second—and Rossi trying to close the gap (which was nearly six seconds at one point) in the closing stages of the race, Gibernau had begun to pin back his throttle a little bit more at every corner and succeeded to halt the assault of the Honda riders by setting a new fastest lap of his own to keep the gap stable at around five seconds.