A significant change to the weight balance of Scott Redding’s Estrella Galicia Marc VDS RC213V saw him take a big step forward in terms of laptime in today’s third MotoGP free practice session at Qatar as the youngster lopped three-quarters of a second off his laptime.
Redding ended the day only six-tenths slower than Marc Marquez and Cal Crutchlow, narrowly missing out on an automatic qualifying two spot but must now battle the soft-tyre mob to get through qualifying one tomorrow.
“The first session was really difficult, because the feeling I’d had with the front here at the test simply wasn’t there today. The problem was made worse by a lack of rear grip; whatever I tried I just couldn’t seem to improve,” said Redding.
“For the second session we made some fairly big changes to the bike and, straight away, the feeling was there again. In some corners the problems we’d had in the morning were completely eliminated, while in others they were only reduced, but the feeling overall was much better.
“My target was to do a 1’55.5 so I was happy enough when I got down to a 1’55.4, until I saw my position on the timesheet. It’s tough out there and we still need to do some work tomorrow, especially in the last sector where I’m losing four tenths in just three corners.”
