As anticipated pre-race by the Australian and American duo, today's 21-lap battle at the Sepang circuit was dictated by tyres as both struggled to overcome a lack of grip in an effort to better their final positions.

McCoy collected a solitary world championship point but it was hardly the boost he was looking for with his home race at Phillip Island, near Melbourne, taking place in just seven days time.

His problems were evident from the time sheets. The 30-year-old's fastest lap in the race came on lap four, but his time of 2m08.156 was almost three seconds slower than the time he'd produced in an encouraging display to qualify ninth yesterday.

Despite making a good start to hold his grid position for the majority of the opening lap, it wasn't long before McCoy found himself struggling to maintain his pace with the traction problems taking hold from the early stages.

It was a particularly disappointing day for Hopkins, who struggled to recover from a poor start. Pushing hard to try and maintain his impressive points-scoring record in his rookie season, he tumbled off his two-stroke 500 shortly before the halfway point. Although he managed to remount, he ended up 18th.

It promises to be a tough conclusion to the 2002 campaign for the Red Bull Yamaha team in the face of mounting opposition from the increased number of 990cc four-strokes. Proof of the vast gulf between the four-strokes and two-stroke 500s was evident this afternoon. Max Biaggi's overall race time on the Yamaha YZR-M1 was 45 seconds faster than last year's winning time set on a two-stroke when McCoy finished third.

Garry McCoy - 15th - "That was the best I could do and the toughest race I've had to score one point. I jumped with the pack at the start but the edge grip on my tyre went away early ­ virtually from the first lap and I was just sliding it into corners on the brakes, gassing it up and holding it sideways. It was really hard work to keep the bike upright and it just wasn't possible to carry any decent corner speed. In Turn One I was just idling on the throttle. In the end I was just having fun, especially holding big slides through Turn Three. It was the best our race tyres could do today."

John Hopkins - 18th - "The tyres wouldn't hook up, it was a bad race, that's it. I didn't make the start I wanted and then got stuck behind slow riders. When I crashed I just tucked the front. Nothing more I can say really."

Peter Clifford - Team Director - "That was thoroughly disappointing. There's not really too many positives we can take away from today at all other than the fact that both guys are in one piece. Performance wise it has got to be better in Australia."