Britain’s Scott Redding is mystified by an complete lack of rear grip with the stiffer-construction tyres Michelin brought to the Jerez MotoGP round and despite their best efforts, his Octo Pramac team haven’t yet come up with a solution.

The tyres’ carcass has been stiffened since Redding’s rear failure in Argentina and he thinks that this, coupled with his riding style, means the Ducati just can’t find grip, especially with the softer compound option which he says just goes sideways. Redding says they need to look at the data in small detail to find out where the problem lies.

“It can’t be the setting as that has worked at three races already, so it can’t be setup, the only thing that has changed is the tyre. Maybe it is the tyre we are struggling to understand at this moment but it’s not only me, the other Ducatis are not finding it easy. I seem to be suffering a little more, maybe with my riding style, so we need to sit down, take a step back look at the big picture but try and understand in small detail where we can improve,” said Redding, speaking at the track.

“Tomorrow’s the race so we can’t try anything completely opposite. We need to take the positives and remove the negatives. I put a new tyre on and it feels no different to an old one, and from there it gets worse. So that’s the problem. In the morning, we had a new tyre from the beginning and I thought we had improved the hard tyre, not bad grip. We put the soft in at the end and it was like a hard with ten laps on from new.

“I thought we had made progress but just by changing the tyre it just goes sideways, so we’re a bit confused. We have to do the job the best we can and find something. We are too far away at the moment. In the worst case, I need to be in the top ten and we are not there. There is something that is not quite there with traction. Front is not bad, turning not bad but we just have no traction for the moment.

“There is no a clear direction that we can follow with certainty. During a weekend we can make two, maximum three changes on the set up. After two days at Jerez we tried eight-ten different solutions without being able to improve. It is a shame to be in this position, surely one of the worst qualifying for me. To be honest I do not know what can happen tomorrow. I only hope that the situation will improve. We are in a bit of a situation.”

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