Hayden fired up on return to Estoril

Hayden arrived at Estoril with a 12-point championship lead in 2006, but departed with an eight point deficit to Valentino Rossi after Pedrosa took him out of third place early in the race.

The crash left the American distraught as he believed it had ruined his title chances, although Rossi's crash in the deciding round at Valencia ultimately handed the championship back to Hayden.

"It kind of makes me smile now to think about last year when I almost saw my dream of being world champion go out of the window there," said Hayden.

"So it would be nice to get a little bit of redemption this weekend.

"It's been a struggle at times this year and we've had some bad luck and made a few mistakes, so I am excited to go to Estoril and try to turn it around."

But Hayden is concerned that the narrow performance window of both the Michelin tyres and the Honda RC212V could make the weekend tricky for the team.

"The weather is always unpredictable which makes Thursday's tyre choice really critical," he said.

"I think right now the Michelins are quite dependent on the weather conditions so we need to work to try to improve that.

"It would be really nice to roll something out of the truck on Friday morning that was nearly perfect and just have to sweeten it up a little.

"Though one thing we've learned this year is that our bike takes quite a while to set up - we've really got to dial it in. My guys are doing some good work and we've been making some progress in the last few races.

"It's not like I'm under the same kind of pressure as last year so we'll just try to have fun, let it roll and see what we can do on Sunday."

Pedrosa said he was no longer thinking about the events of 2006 and was just eager to make up for being caught up in an opening lap tangle with Randy de Puniet at Misano two weeks ago.

"It's so frustrating for everyone when you have a race like the last one at Misano, especially when it's out of your control, and so I know the guys in my garage are as keen as I am to go for the result we deserve in Portugal," said the Spaniard.

"My results at this circuit haven't been the best, but I've had a couple of pole positions before and I think that, if we can get the correct package this weekend, we should be able to be competitive.

"The tyres will be really important again of course and the weather here can really play a part. It rains quite often at this track, but since we've had a lot of rain already this year I hope we get a dry weekend in Portugal - we'll see.

"Obviously the memories from last year's race are not great but that's behind us now and we'll go into the weekend with the normal approach and try to close the gap to second place in the championship."