After a big crash on Saturday in WorldSBK race one at Donington, Scott Redding was hurting, physically and mentally.

His footpeg had gouged a bit out his ‘upper thigh’ and he was generally battered nad bruised but as he lined up for the SUperpole race on Saturday he had fitted wet tyres, not intermediates and paid a heavy price.

“Pissed me off, that did,” Redding told bikesportnews.com. “I went out for the sighting lap and it was a bit wet. I went down Craner and I went left and it was quite wet. I went through the old hairpin, bit damp. I thought, Donington not very grippy anyway. If it rains a little bit it's going to have quite a big effect.

"Then the last lap it was quite dry and then Melbourne it was a bit wet. It was kind of spitting and I said, ‘just go with the wets.’ Then basically they all pulled the warmers off and everyone was with inters. I went down Craner and I thought that I’d have a few moments and then it will be a bit like, whoa! They have more grip with the inters now than the wets, which pulled away from me and I was like, ‘I’m done now.’

"It was just the wrong choice. My choice. Always my choice now, since it kind of went wrong at Aragon. It’s my choice. I normally bite the bullet and do it, but I don’t have grip in the rain… if a put a slick on there? Yesterday I was sent to the moon…”

When asked if that was a symptom of the Ducati, the lack of grip, Redding said, “Yeah, I think a little bit. We all struggled this weekend. It wasn’t easy for any of us. Same in the rain. It just never really got better for us. It was okay, but you just don’t feel safe. You feel very loose, very slick. When I started that first lap of the sprint race, I had no grip compared with them, even for a couple of corners. I would have been better off going with the inters or slicks, but I made the choice to the rains and it was the wrong choice. That was that.”
 
In the second race Redding was closing in on third placed rider Tom Sykes, but despite a desperate attempt to get close enough to pass he just ran on the Melbourne hairpin and finished a gutsy fourth.

“It was nice to have a go,” said Redding. “The problem I had, we’ve been suffering a lot in sector two the long left at the hill at the Old Hairpin. I was losing three tenths. There was nothing I could do. I was just spinning and spinning and spinning. I was kind of catching, getting closer, and I just thought, I’m going to have to try and have a brake and if he’s broke a bit early I’m going to have to just switch sides and just square it off. But I was just way too far. I didn’t have the punch.

The Ducati doesn’t have the edge grip, so the last two corners for us are quite difficult. I have to steam in, turn, and come out. So I knew I was going to out-drag him up to the last corner, so I just had to send it. I kind of knew it wasn’t going to happen, but I thought I’d have a go anyway. I’ve come this far, just hunting and hunting the whole race.

"It was hard because that was kind of the first time the bike kind of worked. Halfway through that race I dialled it in. At first I was fighting with it. Then I was like, okay, that works, this is working. Then I could get my lines. Then I was going a bit wide. Then I was just kind of settling through the race. That’s why my lap times were the same and I got a bit faster at the end. But it was like FP1 for me. That was the first time I had a little bit of feeling with the bike here.”
Ducati’s once fabled top speed advantage has been eaten into in recent times by the advances of others, and of course the first bikes lost some revs as Bautista in 2019 was so fast at the beginning of the season.

“That’s the thing,” said Redding. “Two years ago they had a massive advantage and RPM got dropped, but they had a rider on it that weighed about the same as the side of my leg. So, when I got on the bike, I haven’t really had the Ducati power advantage. I kind of feel like I’m quite balanced with everyone, quite fair in the straight, but we don’t have the same agility performance as the other manufacturers for the moment, so we’re kind of a little bit in a loss. So it’s a bit hard, really. Ducati has kind of always relied on their straight line speed a little bit.

"They have it at handling, but they could get away with a little bit less agility, but now the other manufacturers have kind of stepped it up a bit. We don’t have that advantage for the moment, so it’s hard for us to recover something. Sometimes you’ve got a real technical sector, lots of long corners, and then you’ve got a big straight. We don’t really recover anything like a couple of years ago we would have. So that’s just where we are at the minute with it.”