The Oulton Park BSB test was Scott Redding’s first time riding his race bike since the end of the 2025 season and the time off the bike left him “physically feeling it”.

Redding, of course, is well-known for his enjoyment of training, especially cycling, but riding a motorcycle – especially a race bike – stresses parts of the body that few, if any, other exercises can replicate.

As a result, Redding’s first two-day BSB test of the year at Oulton Park (he missed the Donington test on 3–4 April) was a decent physical test, especially on day two after he spent day one focusing on long runs.

“More physically feeling it than riding,” Redding said, speaking to Crash.net.

“It was nice to have a long break, to be honest. I was skeptical how I would go, but I felt good straight away on a riding ability. 

“Just with the new bike we had to start to work in a different direction. I thought we would get away with the settings of last year in the bike, but actually we’ve got to change it quite a lot. So, we’re just figuring that out. 

“Just blowing the cobwebs out, really. 

“Being at a track I enjoy but it’s not ‘my track’, per se, so happy to extract the lap time that we did. Managed to extract the lap time, which I was quite surprised because I didn’t feel like I was on my full limit – always in testing I don’t push over the limit, really, so I felt like the lap time was maybe four-tenths slower than it actually was, so that’s a good thing. 

“I feel like the bike was working well but not perfect, so to finish up with being more comfortable than I was [on Tuesday] and [Wednesday] morning, it sets me up good for the first round. 

“So, the main thing is just getting that bike fitness in, I was always doing longer runs [on Tuesday] which I paid the toll for today but it is what it is; and I was just riding a lot of old tyres, really, just trying to get my head back into riding a little bit, then put a freshy [fresh tyre] in and did what we had to do.”