Portugal GP. First practice

Valentino Rossi and Toni Elias, fastest in Estoril
In addition to Rossis and Eliass pole, Pedrosa is second in the 125cc and Fonsi Nieto fifth in the 250cc
 As usual on the Portuguese track, the wind played one of the leading roles at the Grande Premio de Portugal, with blasts of up to 29 km/h, making it difficult for the riders to do their job. In the MotoGP class Valentino Rossi is still decided not give any chance to his rivals, neither in practices nor in the race. After his victory at the Czech Grand Prix, the Italian rider of the Repsol Honda Team set the fastest time this afternoon in a highly contended first qualifying session, with Gibernau, Biaggi, Checa, Ukawa and Rossi  fighting for the pole. Nicky Hayden, once again on a circuit he hasnt been before, kept himself around the fourteenth place during the session but managed to move up to the ninth position of the provisional grid in the last minutes. In the 250 GP class, Toni Elias was fastest this morning, a result he managed to repeat this afternoon taking the provisional pole position with almost have a second of advantage over the second fastest rider, Frenchman Randy de Puniet. Fonsi Nieto, with setting problems, managed to improve his times along the session, setting finally the fifth fastest time. Sebastián Porto finished sixth despite crashing due to problems with the brakes; Joan Olivé was eighteenth and his teammate Héctor Faubel twentieth. In the minor category, the three Repsol riders had different luck. While Dani Pedrosa managed to set the second fastest time, only five hundreds of a second behind the provisional pole time, clocked by the San Marino rider De Angelis, Pablo Nieto and Héctor Barberá finished farther in the back. Nieto was sixteenth and his teammate Barberá, who crashed, finished twentieth. Both of them had technical problems they hope to solve for tomorrow with the help of their team.