Scott Redding is confident of improving in Friday’s two remaining practice sessions after describing Thursday’s FP1 as a test of sorts. The Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider was 12th quickest, 1.093s off the pace, but later revealed he had used the first session to complete his unfinished testing programme.
“We had a couple of small issues with the tank cover and the brakes, so it wasn’t the perfect start, but it was better to get these issues out of the way now. We used the hard tyre at the beginning before switching to the soft at the end, which made a big difference to the lap time. We tried a few different things today that we couldn’t try at the test here because of the rain on the final day, so this was a bit of a last test day for us really. I’m happy enough with today, because we still have room for improvement, so tomorrow the work really starts.”
Team Principal Michael Bartholemy was satisfied with the result of the opening session given the programme Redding was running to and is excited to see his full potential later in the weekend.
“Scott had a couple of small problems at the start of today’s free practice session, but these were quickly rectified by the team. Most of the session was spent testing a couple of changes that we would have tried here at the test if the final day hadn’t been rained off, so to finish just over a second off provisional pole tonight was a reasonable start to the weekend. Tomorrow we return for two more free practice sessions, at the end of which I expect us to be a little higher on the timesheet and closer to the frontrunners.”
