Colin Edwards paid tribute to the medical team that looked after him in the wake of his Catalunya crash after finishing on the podium at Silverstone despite breaking his collarbone just a week earlier.
The American sustained the injury in Friday practice in Spain, had surgery on the Saturday, yet felt fit enough to try and race on the Sunday, although he only intended to take the start to maintain his unbroken run of MotoGP appearances, and would have retired early.
He never had any doubts about racing at Silverstone this weekend, and after a cautious performance in practice, Edwards qualified eighth, swiftly moved up to fifth in the wet race, then grabbed the podium after Jorge Lorenzo and Marco Simoncelli crashed out.
"I really don't know what to say," said Edwards. "I had a good doctor, he did a great job. The collarbone was really not even the big issue - I separated the muscle from my ribs, that's really what's hurting."
Edwards said the weather conditions at Silverstone had been extremely tough to handle.
"It was unbearable," he said. "After about 10 or 11 laps it was like, 'okay, can we just throw the chequered flag because we know where we're going to finish...' It was hard to keep the thing on two wheels."
He also praised his Tech 3 Yamaha team and engineer Guy Coulon for providing such a competitive bike despite major setup changes between the warm-up and race.
"We didn't even try the setup that we raced on all weekend," said Edwards. "We went out this morning with a completely different setup, and it wasn't working so we started the race completely different and it worked out."