Bancaja Aprilia's Bradley Smith has re-taken second place on the MotoGP 125cc world championship leaderboard today and is closer to team-mate Julian Simon after the Spaniard crashed and re-mounted to finish in 12th place.

Smith ended the race in third behind Pol Espargaro and Sandro Cortese but Simon lobbed it halfway through the race and Nicolas Terol, who second was in the championship, crashed and then retired. Smith's race nearly came to an end when he came close to crashing as part of Terol's fall, but Smith kept a cool head in the lap six incident. He was in the running for the victory, but a decisive last lap left him settling for third place and another podium for his 2009 tally.

The Oxfordshire coppertop is now 50.5 points in arrears with a possible 75 points left from the remaining three rounds of the championship, which goes to Phillip Island in a couple of weeks' time.
"It is obvious that victory would have been an option had I been able to slipstream Pol, but it wasn't to be. My plan was to stick behind him and pull out on the line, but on the last lap Sandro got in between us and closed up," said Smith.

"I am satisfied with the result, especially on a day in which so many other guys fell. I was lucky not to go down when Terol crashed. I had a good pace, even though we had lost a lot of time on day one with the crash in practice, so I owe a lot to the team for their work this weekend. They were speedy in preparing the bike to perfection for m despite the time constraints.

"We were able to finish off the weekend with a podium, which is good when you consider that Portugal is not one of my best tracks. We are a little too far from the title, but we are in a good spot to finish high up in the standings and I know that I can go well in Australia. We have taken a step forward this weekend, so I hope that this continues at Phillip Island."
Blusens Aprilia's Scot Redding ended the race in 16th place while Danny Webb retired.
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