Rossi: Left turns are the problem.

World champion Valentino Rossi and Gauloises Yamaha team-mate Colin Edwards will start from the second and third row of the grid respectively in tomorrow's Portuguese Grand Prix after experiencing a tough qualifying session at Estoril this afternoon.

In bright sunshine and tepid ambient temperatures of 16? degrees, both Rossi and Edwards mounted pole attacks in an entertaining finale to the session but were unable to convert their good race pace into a front row grid position.

Rossi, who has taken victory for the past four successive seasons at the circuit, qualified fourth fastest; the Italian appeared to have sealed third place but he was dislodged by a surprise late flurry from Ducati's Carlos Checa.

"The bike has changed a lot since we raced here last year so we have had to work hard on the setting," explained Valentino. "It was probably better this morning than it was in the afternoon but it is virtually impossible to get a perfect set-up at this track and fourth place isn't bad.

"I'm still having problems getting heat into the left-hand side of the tyre," he revealed. "We tried some different tyres today to try and fix that but we're still not at 100%. There are four or five guys with a good rhythm and I think the pace will be very fast tomorrow. If the weather is good then it should be a group race and it will be a very tough battle."

Meanwhile, Edwards also lost places in the late scrap for times, making a mistake on his best lap and dropping to seventh place.

"That was tough!" he said. "We've worked hard this weekend on my race pace and we're pretty pleased with how it's looking but I had difficulties again on the qualification tyres. Part of the problem is that you only have two laps to get it right and if you make a mistake it can cost you several positions on the grid. I ran a little wide in turn one on my best lap so there are definitely a few tenths we can make up.

"Generally we need to make the bike more stable and rider friendly but we're getting there," he claimed. "We'll see what happens with the weather tomorrow. I'd prefer it to be dry for the fans and the TV but I won't mind if it rains - it would be kind of good to have a wet race at this stage of the season and the bike felt good in the wet at the Jerez tests. Either way is good for me."

"The last fifteen minutes were a good battle for the hot lap and some riders emerged who we haven't seen much of this weekend," added team director Davide Brivio. "In any case both our riders have reasonable grid positions and a good race pace so we are confident. It is going to be a very tough race. If it rains it will be even more unpredictable!"