Britain’s Scott Redding says he is still a little bit behind the curve when it comes to fuel strategy over the course of a MotoGP race because his size means the Desmosedici will use more juice to haul him around.

Weight is a factor for the Octo Pramac Ducati man but the other difficulty is a lack of data. Due to mechanical and other issues that prevented him from finishing races this year, Redding is missing data on fuel consumption and also flag to flag races mean the fuel usage figures aren’t much help.

Redding will always have to switch to a more fuel efficient engine map in the course of a race which inevitably mean less power but the Gloucestershire rider is upbeat and says he and the team are learning all the time.

“It’s fuel mapping, slowing the bike down, basically. We have six maps, three fuel maps and power maps so we can have smoother power at the bottom to try to use less fuel but the thing with the fuel map it leans the bike off so it starves the bike of fuel which means less power,” Redding said at Brno this evening.

“So really it is about finding the strategy. In the first half, you can use more fuel but you can’t put more fuel in the tank so it’s trying to find a balance. You can use more but then if you don’t have enough you have to go to the lowest fuel map which means you are going around to finish.

“The difference at Spielberg was about three tenths, which doesn’t sound a lot but when it’s over 28 laps it is a lot. I was 1’25.2 in the middle of the race, then changed map and went to a 1’25.9 but I wasn’t going to catch the group so I went back again. I would like to have the A-map all the race but we wouldn’t finish at some circuits.

“The first five laps are blind, it doesn’t give any signal so you have to trust yourself and the strategy. If you use too much, then you get lights on the dashboard so map B and that should do the race if you ride smoothly. If you get map C you can do it but if the light comes on, that’s end of the story.”