Scott Redding “hindered” by BMW changes

Redding made an encouraging start to his third weekend with the factory BMW team, qualifying a season-best fourth behind the series’ ‘big three’, Jonathan Rea, Toprak Razgatlioglu and Alvaro Bautista.

After finishing eighth in a race where all factory riders reached the finish, BMW elected to make certain changes to Redding’s bike in a bid to improve his prospects for the remainder of the weekend.

However, this decision backfired as the Briton slipped to 11th in the final full-distance race on Sunday, even losing out to satellite Ducatis of Axel Bassani and Xavi Fores.

Speaking after the race, Redding said he was happy with the braking capability of the BMW until the set-up change left him struggling on both the entry and exit to corners.

“We made a change with the bike from Race 1 to the Superpole race and Race 2, but obviously with conditions on Sunday morning I used a SC0 rear tyre and I thought that was some of the issue,” explained the Briton.

“So I was expecting it to be better. [But when] we put the SCX tyre for race 2 and it was just the same, no drive, couldn’t stop the bike. And that was it.

“I couldn’t stop the bike, in Race 1 I could stop the bike really well. That was gone. Exiting the corner, no drive trying to go with the guys. I was just hindered everywhere.

“The rest of the weekend was a bit more positive. I was able to be a little bit close to the front guys and we’ve got to take it as a positive.”

Redding said it would have been prudent for BMW to evaluate the changes in practice, but is confident that the team will not repeat the mistake in the future.

“It was something that we wanted to try and we believed it would make the step but it didn’t. And we kinda should have been a little bit smarter to go, ‘didn’t work in the Superpole race, take it out’,” he said.

“But we [had] used the SC0 tyre. Earlier in the weekend I felt…