Lorenzo relieved to conquer soft tyres

The Spaniard said struggled to get to grips with the soft Bridgestones in recent rounds, hampering his efforts to out-qualify his Yamaha team-mate and title rival Valentino Rossi.

But he had no such problems at Estoril today, dominating the session to claim his fourth pole of 2009.

"Finally we got a set-up for the soft tyre," said the relieved Lorenzo.

"I was a little bit worried at the last races because we couldn't do a fast lap with the soft, but with the hard we were competitive. Now we are competitive with both the hard tyre and the soft."

Lorenzo is currently 30 points behind Rossi in the championship with four rounds remaining. He is very confident about his bike's pace in Portugal and said all he could do was to go flat-out for victory and ignore the points situation.

"In every practice I felt great on the bike," said Lorenzo. "I will try to push at the limit and see what happens."