Scott Redding insists he was managing his pace en route to claiming a half-points victory in a truncated opening British Superbike Championship race at Assen.

The former WorldSBK rider had a commanding start to the race to thank for him coming away with his third win of the 2025 BSB season, even if only half-points would be awarded when the race was abandoned after 10 of 18 laps due to persistent heavy rain.

The race had begun just as the heavens had opened with Redding capitalising on his front row start to relieve Kyle Ryde of the lead mid-way around the opening revolution before putting the hammer down to stretch his advantage to four seconds in just a couple of laps.

From here Redding would simply manage the margin back to the competition as they attempted to hunt him down again, first from Christian Iddon - before the AJN Steelstock Kawasaki rider ran off at Turn 1 - and then Leon Haslam.

While Haslam would get the gap back down to just over a second at one stage, the red flag would ultimately nix the Moto Rapido Ducati's rider's attempts to get on terms with Redding.

“It was just a strange one for me, really. Nobody had really done laps in the rain, so I kind of felt good on the bike. So I just thought, just do your own thing if you get away

"Got off to a good start - Kyle came outside of me in turn one. I thought ‘well, there must be grip’ so when he made a small mistake I was able to pass him back and then I saw the pit board after a couple of laps had three seconds. I thought, right, that’s good, but it also gave me a little bit of warning. I was kind of like ‘oh, maybe you’re pushing a bit too hard.”

"So then I thought, right, try to manage the best you can, and then Iddon was coming quite fast, bringing the lap time down.

"I tried to respond, didn’t do much, but then he crashed and then there was like, five seconds to where Leon was.”

“I tried to just do the same thing, just manage the race from behind me. When they closed the gap, I tried to respond with a better lap time, but I was the first one through the track conditions and coming back into the final two sections, I couldn’t really see the kerbs that much.

"Obviously the guys behind could see that I was okay, so they could keep pushing. So it was a difficult place to be. But I don’t think I would have changed that any other way, so I was happy.”

“We had no set-up really we just jumped on and just wing it as best as we can  - so to come out with the win, I’m happy and I think race direction did the right call for today."