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Rossi hoped for more than third

Valentino Rossi extended his Estoril podium record with third place today, meaning he has now finished on the podium at all of his nine career visits to the Portuguese track. The Fiat Yamaha Team rider played a key part in an exciting first half of the race but was unable to keep pace with his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, who took his maiden premier-class victory today to make it a second consecutive double podium for the Yamaha pair.

Rossi got a good start from third on the grid and managed to take the lead from Lorenzo at the end of the straight after one lap. Spots of rain complicated issues and it was a tense first few laps with Rossi leading and Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso bunched together close behind him. Rossi pushed as hard as he dared whilst trying to conserve his tyres, but he was unable to pull a gap from the chasing pack and was eventually caught by his team-mate on lap 13 of 28. Pedrosa in turn passed him three laps later and from then on it was a somewhat lonely race in third for the multiple world-champion, as he dropped back and eventually crossed the line 12.723 seconds adrift.

Rossi's podium today gave him an important 16 points and he remains third in the championship. The Fiat Yamaha Team tops the team's table, Yamaha the Manufacturer's, whilst Tech 3 riders Colin Edwards and James Toseland finished fourth and seventh respectively to make it a good day all round for the Japanese factory. Rossi will stay on for a one-day test tomorrow ahead of the next race in China on 4th May.

"At the end of the day this isn't a bad result for us because we expected this to be quite a difficult track for us," said Rossi. "My M1 worked well today; I got a good start and was able to stay at the front to begin with and have some fun. My Bridgestone tyres were working well but I was thinking about trying to conserve them as much as possible because I knew 28 laps was going to be hard. Unfortunately I couldn't stay with Lorenzo and Pedrosa in the later stages and I started to slide a little bit, but anyway to have two podiums in a row with Bridgestone is very important because we're still in the learning stages of our relationship. I think we've made another step forward this weekend and we have an important test tomorrow - I hope in China we will be able to fight for the win!"

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