Britain’s Scott Redding finally found the front-end feel he has been missing at the Qatar MotoGP test which enabled him to generate competitive laptimes without hurling himself into the scenery.

Redding has done a lot of crashing pre-season with myriad issues on the new-to-him Desmosedici but the team made a breakthrough at Losail which aw a 1’54.750 fastest lap and a race run in the low 1’55s-high 1’56s

“I know bike has a lot of potential. So we had to work a lot, a little bit on my setting from last year because my problem was no confidence – I crashed in every test which is not really like me - and I was off the pace. So we had to keep trying things and we tried a few out the box which seemed to work for me. I was working with the bike more like my old self; just doing what I want to do and going with my feeling,” said Redding.

“I was going faster and faster. Since I got the feeling with the front I’ve been able to build my confidence a lot more. I was saying to the guys that I feel after the time attack that I could go faster – and it’s been a long time since I knew I could go faster. So the work we’ve done has been a bit late but it was good to come here. I said I wasn’t going to push for a laptime before Qatar – and I think we’ve built up quite nicely with the race run, pushing about 80 per cent to be consistently in the 1’55s and low 1’56s. I’m really happy with the job we’ve done.”