Go&Fun Honda’s Scott Redding is getting to the bottom of his problem switching from Brembo to Nissin brakes and was only fractionally slower than HRC stablemate Nicky Hayden on the first day of MotoGP testing at Qatar.

The Gloucestershire rider set a 1’57.922 in the desert last night compared to Hayden’s 1’57.574 but the pair are still some way behind Aleix Espargaro, the fastest of the Open class riders, who was quickest on a 1’55.386.

“Today it was really nice to ride my bike on a new track; also the conditions were pretty good compared to Malaysia, where there is a lot of humidity and really high temperatures. Now I feel good with my bike and I was happy with today’s testing session,” said Redding.

“We need to improve a little bit the feeling with the front end, because when I went faster I started to ‘push’ the front a lot, but we will work on this area tomorrow. Engine power is still not really good, but the situation is not so bad compared with the other ‘Open’ Honda machines. Brakes worked well from the first exit, so I’m happy with them. Tomorrow we will focus on improving the feeling with the front, and we will try to close the gap to the first Honda RCV1000R.”