Hope yet for riders of 250's...

[aardvark]

OK, so maybe the title's a little misleading, but it's still interesting: (From crash.net)

Despite its one-kilometre home straight, the tight twists and turns that form the majority of the Estoril circuit make it the slowest venue on the MotoGP World Championship calendar - and as such allows the leading 250cc two-stroke machines to outpace, and embarrass, some of their 990cc four-stroke MotoGP cousins.

After day one of the Portuguese Grand Prix, 250cc provisional pole sitter Dani Pedrosa had steered his Movistar Honda around the 1.4km circuit in a best time of 1min 41.285secs.

That compares credibly with MotoGP pace setter Alex Barros' fastest Friday lap of 1min 38.516secs - and means the young Spaniard lapped comfortably faster than the WCM of James Ellison (+0.855secs from Dani), the Proton KR of Shane Byrne (+1.177secs) Roberto Rolfo's D'Antin Ducati (+1.483secs) and the second WCM of Franco Battaini (+2.119secs) today.

In total the top 15 250cc riders - who like WCM and D'Antin use Dunlop tyres - all lapped quicker than Battaini, while the leading lap time by a 125cc competitor was a 1min 45.957secs circulation set by KTM's Mika Kallio, putting the Finn within 2.5secs of the slowest MotoGP machine.