Ben Spies took the blame for dropping from four🅺th to ninth in the𓂃 early stages of Sunday's Portuguese MotoGP.

The Fac📖tory Yamaha star, looking to rebound from eleventh places in the opening races of the year, said that four or five big mistakes caused his decline.

The Texan later regrouped and regained eighth place from Honda's LCR's Stefan Bradl as he tꦕook the chequered flag for the first time at Estoril.

"Very mixed emotions today, this is actually the first time in three years that I've finished a race here," sai♔d Spies. "As I 🎉told the team, I made four or five big mistakes during the race, they cost me time and places.

"It was a rough race b༺ut I'm continuing to build my confidence, I don't enjoy Estoril so I'm happy to have finished.

" Now we go to Le Mans which is a great event with an amazing cro♏wd,💙 but another track I don't love so much! I'm happy with the bike and its performance so we'll continue to build my confidence and improve the results."

Team director Massimo Meregalli f💃elt that the first error, whi🎃ch saw Spies run wide, had a knock-on effect.

"Ben had some difficulties during the race, he made a few mistakes, I think the first one put a loꩵt of pressure on hi🅰m so he was trying to push harder and was unable to," said Meregalli.

"The most importa💧nt thing is he got back his feeling and was quite satisfied with the set up which gives us good confidence for the coming races. Tomorrow we will test some new items, l🐈et's hope they give us some good results."

Team-mate Jorge Lorenzo finished second.