WorldSBK Most: ‘Where do you draw the line?’ - Redding

After his Donington podium, BMW’s Scott Redding had another strong ride in WorldSBK race one at Most, which is a very different kind of circuit.

All the new parts and settings that BMW and Redding used so effectively in the UK took him to seventh in Superpole but third in the race, and it could have been second had he not been ‘Topraked’ in the final few laps.

It was amazing to see the white BMW move forward so effectively, but two things helped. Rea and Razgatlioglu fighting for the lead rather than following their own class leading pace - with Bautista just behind. That slowed them both up a bit. But when the light rain started to fall on the rider’s visors, that was the key moment for Redding.

“I think I’ve got to thank the rain a little bit for that,” he stated after the action subsided. “In them conditions, you just got to put your balls on the line. I don’t have anything to lose. I was pushing and I thought, ‘if I crash, I went down trying.’ I was catching, catching, and I thought, ‘this is working. Keep going, keep going.’ Then I got onto the back of them and I thought, ‘do I get involved with their championship or do I kind of stay around here? I don’t really want to interrupt so much’. Then I thought, ‘fuck it. I feel like I’ve got some pace, so let’s go’.”

After such a disastrous start to the season, being in the mix for a race win just six rounds in felt bizarre to Redding at one stage. But Redding’s memories of a great race finish were clouded by what he saw as too much aggression in the wrong place from one of his rivals.

“I passed Toprak and I thought, ‘that feels weird’. I passed Jonathan and I thought, ‘that felt really weird’. But it was good. I had a lot of adrenaline in the race because I was catching,