The Grand Prix of Portugal held over the weekend in blazing sunshine at the Estoril circuit provided the Dunlop Yamaha Team with its best qualifying result of the 2007 season.

Makoto Tamada scored Dunlop's best qualifying result since Garry MCCoy in 2002 when he placed his Yamaha M1 in fourth place while teammate Sylvain Guintoli scored his best qualifying result of his rookie MotoGP season to claim eighth spot on the grid. Tamada was in a strong position holding down eighth place for 24 laps of the race but unfortunately with less than four laps remaining, crashed out. Guintoli was not feeling 100% over the entire weekend and wasn't able to replicate his strong qualifying efforts into a top ten finish but managed to score more valuable championship points to finish in 14th position.
Sylvain Guintoli 

Sylvain Guintoli - Position: 14thTime: 1 lap
I'm pretty disappointed with my race but the best part of the weekend was the excellent qualifying session we had but the race was completely different. We have proved that we do have something but we have to improve the package so we can battle for the race on Sunday and not just Saturday. I had bad chatter from the start and it just got worse to the point I had to come in. I nearly crashed but I carried on for a lap or two but when I saw that there were about eight laps left I knew I wouldn't finish the race so I decided to come in to change tyres before I crashed. Let's hope we can get something together in Japan next weekend.

Gary Reynders - Sylvain Guintoli Crew Chief
The weekend was not so bad but qualifying was the highlight as Sylvain made a good lap but sadly he was feeling off-colour all weekend. During the race he struggled with chatter and rear grip. Considering his condition I am happy with his race.
 
Makoto Tamada - DNF
That was a very tough race but I am extremely unhappy not to finish as I was expecting so much after qualifying on the second row of the grid. The race was going very well and I was looking forward to a top ten finish and with just four laps to go I thought we were going to do it. I didn't do anything different to the previous lap but when I went into the corner I crashed. I can't explain it.

Guy Coulon - Makoto Tamada Crew Chief
During qualifying we had the perfect rear tyre which allowed Makoto to claim fourth on the grid. During the race the temperature was higher than in practice so it was not easy for the rear tyre. He looked very good in eighth place and also had the eighth fastest lap of the race. With just four laps to go the performance of the rear tyre dropped off. This caught Makoto by surprise and unfortunately he crashed. A disappointing result as we thought we were in for a good result.

Herve Poncharal - Dunlop Yamaha Tech 3 Team Manager
After a great qualifying we knew it would be hard to maintain our grid position but we were still hoping to get a good result as Portugal was our best performance last year. Makoto rode a superb race until the last four laps. He was pushing as hard as he could with the package that he had. He was looking very good for eighth position and he had a 10 second lead over the next place. He looked very comfortable. Unfortunately just when we thought it was going to happen he crashed. Sylvain didn't have a good feeling with his bike from the first lap. He tried to push on but had to pit and rejoined the race to finish in 14th place and get two points. I hope we can get a similar grid positions in Japan but have better results in the race.