Young Aussie Arthur Sissis was fastest in Red Bull Rookies testing at Estoril earlier this year.

South Australian young gun Arthur Sissis will enter this weekend’s second round of the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup as a favourite following his superb maiden race victory at Jerez earlier this month.

The Grand Prix of Portugal this coming weekend sees the third and fourth races of the 2011 season, and it will be Sissis who leads the charge after title leader Philipp Oettl has been ruled out with a broken collarbone.

With Oettl out, Sissis, Aaron Espana and Brad Binder, who trail him in the table, will be out to hack into the 14-year-old German’s points advantage.

Sissis, 15, has a 10 point deficit but his win in the second race at Jerez and the fact that he was quickest at the test in both wet and dry makes him the favourite for Portugal.

In the wet it was Binder, the 15-year-old South African and 13-year-old Spaniard Espana who chased Sissis during the Estoril test but in the dry the danger man was Spanish youngster Xavier Pinsach.

The Estoril circuit produced an epic battle last time the Cup visited Portugal in 2008 when Daijiro Hiura, JD Beach and Sturla Fagerhaug crossed the line covered by five-hundredths of a second.

Close racing is common in the Rookies Cup and the fast teenagers take the trip to the most western circuit in the calendar confident in the circuit knowledge they gained in the three day pre-season test in March.

The circuit is well known for being able to throw everything at the contestants and that is just what happened at the test so it was a great learning experience.