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The home stretch of the 2010 World Championships begins in Portugal with the 125 Title at stake

This weekend, the Motorcycle World Championships return to Europe with the staging of the Portuguese Grand Prix, the penultimate event of the season which will take place at the Estoril Circuit. There, Dani Pedrosa will make a comeback after two further weeks of recovery for his collarbone, having missed the last three races in which Andrea Dovizioso returned to the podium – Japan and Malaysia -, although he also scored his third zero of the season in Australia.

If there is one rider in particular for whom this meeting is special, it is Marc Márquez, who arrives at the Portuguese track with, for the first time, the mathematical probability of being proclaimed 125cc World Champion. The Repsol rider faces the home straight of the Championships leading the overall standings, with twelve and sixteen points to his advantage over the second and third classified riders, with 50 points remaining to play for. The Repsol rider, just as he has done throughout the season, is looking towards the race with the determination to do a good job from the first minute of track time at a track where, once again, the very changeable weather may play a decisive role.

Conditions with which Dani Pedrosa will also have to contend, who, still convalescing from his fractured collarbone, preferred not to risk a hasty return in Australia in order to continue with his recovery. The Repsol rider has continued with his physiotherapy to regain the strength and mobility in the musculature of his left shoulder to recover the level of competitiveness which has enabled him to be on the podium in Portugal for the last three years.

A podium to which Andrea Dovizioso returned in Japan and Malaysia but from which he was promptly deposed in the last race held in Australia due to mechanical problems with his bike. The Repsol rider showed once again during this intense stage of the season that he was able to match the performance of the fastest and, on the return of the World Championships to Europe, the Italian rider of the Repsol Honda Team will again do battle to be up with the front-runners and stay in the fight for third position in the Championship.

Dani Pedrosa
“We get back on track this weekend at Estoril and, in principle, the situation should be much better than it was for me in Australia. The Estoril circuit is not as demanding as Phillip Island and this should help me to feel more comfortable on the bike. Plus I’ve had some more time to recover which should help too. This kind of injury needs time to heal and with two more weeks having passed I’m really looking forward to seeing how much the shoulder has improved. I went to visit the doctor last Tuesday to have the stitches removed, and the scar is fine. I’ve been doing some more rehabilitation on the muscles and I have some more strength, but I will not be able to fully judge how much difference there is until I get on the bike on Friday morning. Also, I think it can be positive for me that there will be two practice sessions on Friday again, as we had in Aragon. In te rms of the track layout, Estoril has some hard braking areas and it’s bumpy, but the fact that it has more right hand corners than left can be good for us. So, I’m looking forward to getting there with my team and seeing how I feel”.

Andrea Dovizioso
We head into the Grand Prix of Portugal with a lot of confidence and I think we can get a good result at Estoril. We had two strong second place finishes in Japan and Malaysia, and we could have had another podium finish in Australia too, so there’s no reason to expect anything less this weekend. I know that we are competitive in Portugal and we are determined to have a good race and to fight for another top-three finish. Estoril is a track where I have achieved some good results in the past and, even though I was seventh last year, this wasn’t indicative of our potential. The circuit itself is quite difficult because the layout is slow and narrow, which makes controlling the power of a MotoGP machine a major challenge. This also means it’s really important to understand the track’s characteristics very well and to find a good compromise with the machine set up . We will make full use of the extra practice session on Friday morning and we’re looking forward to these last two races of the season”.

Marc Márquez
“It’s been good to have a week off after so much travelling and such a lot of time away from home in different time zones. You can recoup your energy and this is important at this point in the season because there are two races left which, up to now, are the two most important of my life. We will have to be very focussed again because Estoril is one of those circuits where the weather is very changeable. We have to make the most of the time to do a good job which will allow us to be prepared for all conditions we might come across on track. It’s a circuit at which I went well last year with the KTM. It was a good weekend, apart from the race because I fell when I was in second place. Motivation and drive are still one hundred percent to have a good weekend; we have the same mentality as in the last races”.

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