After qualifying just 17th on the grid, improvements in braking and a switch to the hard rear tyre allowed Valentino Rossi to reach the edge of the top ten by the midway stage of Sunday's Portimao MotoGP. Rossi had been moving through the field with Alex Marquez but took longer than the LCR Honda rider to pass his brother Luca Marini. Then, just a lap after completing the pass, Rossi lost the front of his M1 into Turn 11 and crashed out, meaning no points for the second time in a row after 16th place in the Doha race. "In the race I was better because we improved the setting for the braking and especially after this morning we decided to use the hard rear tyre," Rossi explained....
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