Britain’s Scott Redding admits he went the wrong way with setup on the third day of MotoGP testing at Valencia but following works Honda rider Dani Pedrosa gave him an idea of the direction he needed to take.
Redding was behind the Repsol man and saw the way his RC213V pulled out of turns and, along with crew chief Chris Pike, worked out their factory MarcVDS satellite bike was too low at the back.
“Really, we didn’t know where we were struggling because I couldn’t tell the guys. I was trying to find people on the track to see where the differences were because I felt pretty good but actually it wasn’t,” said Redding, speaking at Valencia.
“The front and rear were working well but actually we were too low in the rear so we couldn’t put all the horsepower down. We were always wheelying, having to reduce the power so we lost a lot of time because we couldn’t use the full potential of the bike.
“I expected to be a bit closer, I was faster with the Open bike so it sucks a little bit but I saw Dani and the way he exited the corner, and the bike pulled him out. It was unreal and definitely not what was happening to me. We have some work to do for Malaysia.
“We are about 90 per cent comfortable, the seat is good, the tank was difficult to do because it is short and thin but overall I started to feel better. We need to modify the tank to make it longer for me. I’m 10 kilos heavier and a lot taller than the other Honda riders and that is making a lot of difference in the weight transfer.”
