Valentino Rossi made a triumphant return to the top step of the podium in Estoril today, sealing his fourth victory of the season with a masterful ride to victory in front of Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner. Rossi's eighth consecutive podium finish at this circuit was his first in six races, since his last victory at Assen back in June.

With 41,566 spectators looking on, Rossi made a poor start from the outside of the front row and slipped to fifth around the first corner, before making up one place and crossing the line first time around behind Nicky Hayden in fourth. He quickly began to put the pressure on Hayden and passed him on lap three, whilst Pedrosa in the meantime picked off Stoner to take the lead. Lap-by-lap Rossi closed the gap and he showed the improved level of his new Yamaha engine when he passed his championship rival on the straight going into lap nine. From then on the race turned into a nail-biting head to head between Rossi and Pedrosa, the pair evenly matched on pace but faster in different areas of the track. With four laps to go Pedrosa ran wide and Rossi came through, only to make a similar mistake moments later, letting the Spaniard back past him. With Pedrosa beginning to slide and Stoner looking menacing in third, Rossi made his move with an inch-perfect pass on the penultimate lap but was forced to keep pushing at the limit to hold on until the end, crossing the line just 0.175 seconds ahead of Pedrosa.

Valentino Rossi - 1st - Fiat Yamaha
First of all I want to dedicate this victory to Colin McRae, who sadly died yesterday. Colin is one of my idols from when I was very young and it's because of him that I have my passion for rally. It's a very sad day for motorsport and I am glad that I could win for him today. This is a very important victory for us in every way, it's the fourth one of the year so the numbers are starting to look a little bit better, and it's a great, great emotion to win again after so long without even a podium. Today my Yamaha and my tyres worked very well. Our new engine is better and today I was able to keep in the slipstream of the Honda and the Ducati on the straight, and even to go alongside them at some points, so this is very important. Michelin have done some good work on the tyres and today we were maybe stronger than our rivals. Once again we've shown that when the tyres are working well we can fight at the top. I had a great battle with Casey but most of all with Dani and it was fantastic fun to ride like this again, at the maximum and with a lot of good passes. When I passed Dani for the first time I tried to go but he was too good so I knew it was going to come down to the last few laps. At the end Dani started to slide a little and I knew I was stronger on the brakes than him in some places, so I was able to make a good pass. When I came out of the last corner on the second to last lap I could only think about how I lost the championship there last year so I knew I had to be far enough ahead next time around! I want to thank Yamaha, Michelin, my team and everyone around me, this is a great day and it's given us a lot of confidence to keep fighting to the end of the season.

Dani Pedrosa - 2nd - Repsol Honda
I'm happy to be fighting for win and the pace we could run today was very quick. We were lapping very fast right until the end and this is good progress for us because there have been races where this was not possible. I made a good start and pushed very hard at the beginning, got into a strong rhythm and the pace was very high. I was able to pass Stoner but when Rossi came past me and was in front I knew that he was not pushing at 100%. With Stoner and Hayden catching this was risky so I went for the overtake to try to up the pace because I didn't want them to catch up. This allowed Rossi to watch me for a while which I think was useful for him in the closing laps. I knew my pace was very similar to Rossi's because we had both been in the front of the race. When he came past at the end I tried my maximum but did not have the speed to take the lead on the last lap. Still, this was a good race for us and I'd like to thank my team and everyone at Honda because they've been working really hard. Now we're going to Motegi, which is a track I like and I hope we can put on another good performance there.

Casey Stoner - 3rd - Marlboro Ducati
I'm happy with the result, but we did have higher expectations going into this race, at least to be there on the last lap, battling for the win. We thought we had a pretty good set-up, but unfortunately I started having a problem with the clutch about five laps into the race. There was no engine braking so I couldn't try and brake as late as the other guys without running wide into the turns. It was very difficult to manage the situation and it took me quite a few laps to learn to ride around the problem. Towards the end I started to have quite a good rhythm again, I was getting faster and started to close them down. I felt like I had enough stamina to chase them but I just didn't have the feeling with the bike and I didn't have enough laps. I needed a few more tenths to get on to the back of them but I wasn't to be, we lost too much time at the beginning. Anyway, I gave my all and the team has done another fantastic job all weekend. We've been fast, we had a little problem today, but I think we can come back again next weekend.

Nicky Hayden - 4th - Repsol Honda
There are a lot of positives from this weekend and pole position was one of them, though certainly fourth wasn't quite the result we hoped for. We knew it was going to be tough today and the first lap wasn't so kind to me - but actually I was just happy to get through the first lap after what happened at the last race. In the beginning I wasn't able to quite get into a rhythm, I was really struggling out of Turn 6 and some riders were able to get up the inside of me into Turn 7. I was duking it out with Melandri which lost me some time and then I found a rhythm, got down into the 1m 37s laps and caught up to Stoner. I was riding right on the edge and used up a lot of my tyres to try to catch the leaders, and then I made one big mistake which cost me a lot of time. My bike ran really well today. The engine was good and the Michelin tyres worked well so I really don't have a lot of excuses - those guys were just a little bit quicker today and I give them credit. This was my first pole position of the year and I had the fastest lap of the race which is definitely positive. We're way better off than we were a few months ago so things feel like they're back on track and I'm enjoying riding the bike again. So, we'll go to Motegi and try to keep it rolling. We've got four more cracks at it!

Race Results: