Britain’s Scott Redding took a dramatic setup gamble for the Qatar MotoGP race which stiffened his Honda RC213V by ten per cent more than the competition and it has proven to have paid off as he starts on the second row at Austin today.

The Estrella Galicia Marc VDS man admitted to going around in circles with setup at Losail so crew chief Chris Pike decided to stiffen all his spring rates which should have lost Redding the grip he needed but the change was for the better.

“We changed the handling massively. In Qatar, we didn’t know where to improve so for the race we went a lot stiffer and it wasn’t negative, so we thought this was the way to go with the bike. We carried on in that direction this weekend and it has just got better and better,” said Redding, speaking in Austin.

“It is a little bit under braking, a little bit turning in and also on the gas with not so much wheelie or spin. It’s strange because the harder you go, you should get less grip so that’s why we were going around in circles in Qatar but it was just getting the bike to turn more so we could pick it up off the edge and go.”

Pike says it wasn’t the sort of change he likes to make and wasn’t really his style but they had exhausted all the other options so took the gamble.

“It looks like a big step from the outside but it’s really a series of small steps. We are just giving him the confidence he needs, but we are still finding our way with it. For Qatar, we were forced into making some pretty big changes which isn’t my style at all but we did it and learned a lot of stuff,” said the former WSBK chief mechanic.

“Basically, we have changed the stiffness, getting the right spring rates for him. We knew we had to be stiffer but we didn’t know how much. So instead of taking little pecks at it, we took a big bite and we found the area, it is more than 10 per cent stiffer though.”