Britain’s Scott Redding has almost halved the gap to the leading Honda between the opening round at Qatar and last weekend’s Catalunya MotoGP race but is finding the switch to the tricky RC213V ‘not easy’.

This year’s bike, as proved my Marc Marquez, is not the golden ticket it has been in the past and Redding has made slow but steady progress with a bike that even the two-time world champion is struggling to tame - finding himself off the pace or in the gravel this season.

“It’s been very difficult, it takes a lot of time, and time is not some thing you have in this paddock. We are doing our best to get there as quick as we can, but it is not something that happens overnight,” said Redding.

“We were only 16 seconds from Dani Pedrosa in this race. At the beginning of the year, we were 28 seconds behind the leading Honda. We are definitely making progress, but it is not easy.”

“It’s all little things. You struggle to get out of the corner so you push harder into the corner, which gives you a problem with the front. It’s a bit of a vicious circle, and you have just have to try and balance out all the small things.

“For someone like me, who last year had a grippy rear tyre and less power, to go to something with more power and less grip is quite annoying. It just needs time, and we are getting there slowly…”