The Estoril circuit could hardly be more different from the fast, sweeping curves of Brno. The circuit near Cascais outside Lisbon is a very tight track which vies with Valencia to be the slowest of the year. But it has one important characteristic in common … lots of corners, where the lightweight three cylinder Proton KR3 500 can make up for a relative lack of top speed with its superlative handling and high corner speeds.

At Brno, although Nobuatsu Aoki crashed out of the race, team-mate Jeremy McWilliams produced a stirring ride to equal his best finish of the season. Caught up in a first-lap scrimmage, McWilliams dropped to almost last, finishing the first lap 19th.

Using his machine’s cornering prowess to the full and overtaking one or even two riders a lap, the Ulster rider prevailed over rivals on ostensibly much faster and more powerful machines to move through to seventh by the finish.

His fine performance made up for Aoki’s misfortune (the Japanese rider was not injured), and capped a strong weekend for the only fully independent manufacturing team in motorcycle Grand Prix racing.

Now the England-based squad are looking forward to another technical track, where they tested well at the start of the season, and where they have a good past record. Last year, sole rider Jurgen van den Goorbergh claimed his best result of the year, seventh, after missing a front-row start by the narrowest of margins.

The circuit combines complex and mainly slow corners with a long, fast straight. But, as McWilliams explains, the character of the straight is such that it does not necessarily count too much against the Proton KR3.

“You come onto the straight out of a long corner, where you keep building speed. The KR3 is always faster on corner speed than the V4 two-strokes and especially the new 990cc four-strokes, so we can be sure of a good entry speed. And it’s downhill,” said McWilliams.

The straight ends in a very slow corner, with very hard braking – another area where the Proton makes up chunks of ground.

As at previous rounds, the team will have both versions of chassis available at the track. Aoki, who lost his top ten championship placing by just two points after his Brno no-score, tends to prefer the standard chassis, while McWilliams has leant towards the development “wideline” unit, which is being brought into play in preparation for the larger 990cc V5 four-stroke engine to be introduced next year.

Continuing development has changed the picture slightly, according to team manager Chuck Aksland. “At Brno both riders used the standard chassis, because we have developed a new rear suspension link that replicates the way the development chassis works the suspension,” he said.  This promotes better agility as well as reduced tyre wear.

“After the good tests there earlier this season, Jeremy has always said he wanted us to bring at least one standard chassis to Portugal, no matter what other developments there would be by then. We will have both types, but it’s likely he’ll work with the standard chassis, as he did at Brno,” Aksland continued.

The other change since the summer break has been to the latest generation of Bridgestone tyres. Former triple World Champion Kenny Roberts spoke of the strides made by the company, in the top class of motorcycle racing for the first time this season.

“They have continually brought new tyres to every race, and after the summer break they had taken a significant step forward,” he said. “Although Nobuatsu has been having some grip problems with his different riding style and machine set-up, Jeremy was very satisfied not only with the grip, but also the much greater endurance of the latest tyres.”

The Portuguese GP, on September 8, is the penultimate European round, and the last race before a quartet of long-distance “flyaway” GPs that will take the team and their rivals on a grueling travel schedule. The GP circus visits Rio de Janeiro, Japan, Malaysia and Australia within five weekends, before returning for the last race of the season at Valencia.

JEREMY McWILLIAMS – “ANOTHER RACE I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO” - "Estoril is a favourite track of mine – and of the KR3. We learned that much in our tests there at the beginning of the year. Since then we have the bike better still, and I’ve learned a lot more about how to get the best of it. The latest tyres are another big plus. At Brno they had full grip for 90 percent of race distance, which is really good. All tyres go off towards the end of the race, but ours lasted longer than we could have expected. I feel I’m riding as well as I ever have at the moment. All in all, I’m really looking forward to the weekend."

NOBUATSU AOKI – “THIS TIME I’M DETERMINED TO FINISH” - "I missed last year’s Portuguese GP with my year on the Bridgestone test team, and the year before I crashed out early on. Then I was injured when I crashed on spilled fuel during the IRTA tests a few days before we came to Estoril, so I was a long way from my best for the tests. Now I have to get up to speed as quickly as possible, and also make sure I can find the right settings early on, to make my race a bit easier than the last one. I need to get back to finishing races to try to regain my top ten championship position."

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