Britain’s Scott Redding suffered a similar fate as Valentino Rossi during yesterday’s Austin MotoGP with the grip from his front Bridgestone dropping off a cliff early on but it resulted in a late crash for the Go&Fun Honda man.

Redding had been running ahead of Nicky Hayden in 13th place in the opening laps and looked set to beat his Production Honda rival for the second race in a row but after having to save myriad tucks with his knee and elbow, he succumbed with only two laps to go.

“It was not good. We struggled with front-tyre life, it dropped off a lot, three-four seconds a lap and that was the reason I crashed, we just had no support from the front, it kept pushing and pushing,” said Redding, speaking at Austin.

“I was trying to save it with my elbow, my knee but after so long you can’t do it any more and with two laps left, it was destroyed so I had a small crash and that was that.

“I felt good, we had done a lot of laps on the front with no problem, it is strange that in the race it was like this. Just in the race it didn’t really work.”