Capirossi eyes strong outing at Estoril

The Italian bounced back from a disappointing season opener in Qatar, where he wound up a distant eighth, to finish in fifth place at the Spanish Grand Prix.

And although Capirossi admits the team are still not where they want to be, he reckons Estoril should suit their bike well.

"I am looking forward to going to Estoril," said Capirossi in a team preview. "I really enjoy the track and I am sure it will suit the GSV-R quite well.

"We had a good race at Jerez and then in the test afterwards we found a couple of things, but we are still not where we want to be and we know it's going to be tough in Portugal.

"The crew are all very focussed and know what is needed and the more we ride the bike the more we are learning about it."

Teammate Chris Vermeulen is also more optimistic about his team's form following the post-race test at Jerez.

"We certainly made some progress at the test after the race at Jerez. We worked hard on tyres and we learned a lot from the test that will help us in the future," he said.

"I cannot wait to get back on the bike and start getting the results that I expect of myself this year. We had a tough time at Estoril last year so we will be looking on putting that right straight away and working on making our way back up the leaderboard."