A battered and bruised Alvaro Bautista intends to race in Sunday's Czech MotoGP despite missing qualifying following an accident in second practice at Brno.
The 25-year-old Spaniard was taken to the hospital following fears that he may have fractured his T1 vertebrae after crashing his Suzuki at Turn 3, but subsequent scans revealed no such injuries.
"Fortunately there is nothing broken, so this is the most important thing and tomorrow I will try and do the race," said Bautista, who sat out qualifying but will take part in the morning warm-up on Sunday. "The crash was because as I entered Turn 3 I lost rear grip and I couldn't do anything about it.
"I did a big jump in the air and I could do nothing to save it. Tomorrow morning I hope I feel much better and I will try to race because I need to do as many kilometers as I can."
Suzuki team manager Paul Denning said: "The best news from the qualifying session didn't even come from the track, it was the report back from the hospital that Alvaro's CT scan had shown no broken or damaged vertebrae and apart from severe bruising he's fine and will attempt to race tomorrow.
"After the bad luck he's had with injuries this year, it's nice to have the roll of the dice for once and that he won't be forced to miss the next few races is a big boost.
Bautista's teammate Loris Capirossi starts the race from 10th on the grid.