Redding looks for setup solutions in Spain

Scott Redding took a step back in Argentina with the Marc VDS rider struggling for grip throughout the weekend. The shine from his progress in Texas, a second row start and consistent pace in practice and qualifying, was lessened by his opening lap crash and a lack of speed in Argentina.

With Redding and his team learning the nuances of the Factory Honda machine the return to Europe next week will be important. Every session Redding and Chris Pike are learning more and more about the bike and finding ways to get the most from the package. The start of this process came when the Marc VDS crew decided to go stiffer and stiffer with the bike and it helped generate grip for Redding on track.

“We need to find some initial speed off the start though,” said Redding after the Argentine race. “It’s a low grip track here and we struggled, Texas was high grip and we were fast. I’m learning a lot with the electronics and the power control. On the Open bike we could have more or less [power] now we can have it by different corners and different parts of the corner. It’s now a lot more useful to use the electronics in the race because I used all three maps today whereas last year there wasn’t a need for that.

“Every race we’re trying to do better and better and we are getting better each week. Texas was very strong but I didn’t do well here last year so I didn’t expect big things coming here. That being said I thought that we could have done better today but hopefully in Jerez we’ll be fighting for the top eight again. We’re getting there but we just haven’t been able to put the package together yet.”

Getting the most from the electronics package is a constant issue for every MotoGP rider. The ultra sophisticated system is a complex rubex cube where there are a huge number of solutions to a problem and making one change has a knock on effect to how difficult it will be to get the most performance from the bike. That’s the stage that Redding is at now. After three races his team will have an idea on a possible solutions but there is a large part of trial and error as to how to find that precise solution.