Pedrosa looking for more progress

Dani Pedrosa is hoping his Repsol Honda team can make more progress this weekend in Portugal following his victory at the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago

The Spaniard arrives at Estoril at the top of the championship standings after his dominant win in Jerez and a third place in the season opener in Qatar.

Pedrosa holds a five-point lead over Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo after scoring his fifth MotoGP victory in the last race.

"Things went very well in the last race, so we will see this weekend," Pedrosa told a news conference in Estoril. "We tested for two days at Jerez after the race and it was more or less okay for us so we hope to improve a little bit more and see if the conditions are right this weekend and still make progress.

"The forecast is not very clear so it's a difficult situation between temperatures, and tyres and the wind. But anyway, we will try to do our best."

Pedrosa has never won at Estoril, but the Spaniard scored his first podium in Portugal with a second place last year, and now he is looking to go one better, although he admits it will also be important to score good points.

"Yeah, last year was my first podium and it was a good result for me," he added. "But we hope to improve on this result this year, but we'll also try to get to the podium."

The Honda rider admitted Estoril presents particular challenges for the riders, with a long straight but also with the slowest corner of the calendar.

"For the bike is strange, and you need a very flexible gearbox. The straight is very long so we have to try to be not too far away compared to the other bikes. The straight is one of the biggest things this weekend and we'll see how our bike works."