Scott Redding left the Aragon #2 WorldSBK round as both a Superpole race winner and a rider who saw that he had bled a lot more points away in the second long race at a circuit that was once famed for its ability to let Ducati riders win. As recently as last year with Alvaro Bautista.

That run of wins continued with Rinaldi on Saturday and Redding himself on Sunday morning, but with Rea and Kawasaki winning again in the final race, what was the big difference for Redding between winning over ten and being not even second but third over a full 18? Both races were completed on the X tyre by Redding on Sunday.

“I can just abuse it for ten laps,” he said of his Superpole race win. “I can use more tyre to get me there. As you saw in the Superpole race, you could see Johnny all over me in nine and ten. All over the back of me I was on my limit - I couldn’t go more.

"He was there. You saw where he passed Rinaldi in race two; the bike has so much grip on exit. It was a shame because I thought I could have had pace to really fight to the line but we were gambling between this fucking SCX and SC0. I was umming and aahrring, but when you are a team and you look at what the others are doing you think it can also work for you. But I tried explain it was not going to work to the end.

"It is just not going to happen. I believe it.  We said let's OK, let’s try… so I tried to save the tyre, tried to push a little bit, save the tyre, change the map but I just ran out of tyre. I checked in the parc ferme and I just had zero wear holes on the left side of my tyre and Rinaldi still had a good amount. That is why he could still go with Johnny. I believe if I had that amount of rubber left I would have beat him today. But I didn’t so I didn’t beat him.”

Maybe it was also just not quite hot enough, five degrees more might have been better for Redding and the use of the X? “I don’t know,” he said. “That is what they say but when it is hotter you slide more, so the slide is also causing tyre wear. This is my point, my view on things. This is what happened when this tyre starts to drop I was sliding more, not going forward. I was using the tyre more.”

Some people, given Ducati’s pedigree and a vast back straight to overtake on, that this was the place that Redding could really peg Rea back on, maybe even overhaul, but not Redding, it seems.

“I honestly never thought that because I saw the data from Bautista and saw how strong the bike was last year,” he explained. “I thought we do not have an advantage, as Ducati, here. We cannot make this gap. We can fight. We can fight for podiums and we can fight to win on some races but we do not have 0.5 on the back straight, which maybe it seems to the naked eye.

If you have 0.5, fuck, I would have won all the races this weekend. We don’t so I never came here thinking we were going to dominate and come out on top. Not one bit. I knew it was going to be tough because when I looked at the races last year, Chaz is always quite strong here and he was battling with Johnny.

"So there is not much more the only one that was getting away was Alvaro. When I checked the data it was because of the straight. It was probably not as good for Ducati as it looks. It has got a good history but maybe because the riders on the bikes like this circuit. It wasn’t bad but we just struggled in some corers, so I hope we can improve that going into some next races.”

The question is does Redding thing his team have the answers for the next races? Again Redding was honest and forthright in his analysis.

“I have had similar problems in some tracks but I had more issue with the front this weekend, the front was what was stopping me more,” he said. “I had not a lot of grip in the long corners. I could manage it but I was struggling with the front getting into those.

"That is why Johnny could catch me into turn ten. I was sliding the front the whole fucking time. This made it more difficult because I couldn’t catch going in, I lost going in and coming out. That is why they passed me coming out of ten. That is where I felt we lost the most.

"If we took out this corner and maybe T3, I think we had it in the bag - but we cannot take corners out of the track and we have to keep working to find the way. But we really never could put our finger on it. I don’t think it came down to a tyre or set-up it is just a characteristic of the bike.

"I think the characteristic of the Kawasaki is stronger than we are in some area sand we are stronger than them in some areas. But, sometimes it favours them more, sometimes it favours us more. We just need to understand how to minimise that and maybe try to close the gap to them in some areas they are stronger.”