If Alvaro Bautista’s romp to victory on his return to Ducati during the opening round of the 2022 WorldSBK Championship was the feelgood story of the weekend at Aragon, things couldn’t have been more different for his predecessor at Ducati, Scott Redding.
In a bafflingly bad start to life as a BMW rider, Redding wallowed well outside the top ten throughout the weekend, sneaking into the points in just one of the three races with a 15th place finish.
Stark contrast to his performance at Aragon twelve months ago when he was a winner with Ducati, the lack of pace in racing conditions came after a low key showing in pre-season testing that hinted he is still adapting to the BMW M 1000 RR, his first inline-four machine after years riding V4s in MotoGP, BSB and WorldSBK.
Moreover, his results were given an unflattering framing by his team-mate for the weekend Ilya Mikhalchik, the substitute for the injured Michael van der Mark.
Though the Ukrainian has good knowledge of the bike that he rode to three IDM Superbike Championship titles in Germany, it was otherwise his first outing in WorldSBK and came in a week that saw him take chunks out of his lap times to secure an impressive top ten in both qualifying and Race 1.
Indeed, Redding was somewhat at a loss to explain why his pace slumped as the temperatures rose, blaming a lack of grip and problems with getting the bike stopped for his lacklustre showing, adding he was quicker on the 2021-spec BMW.
“This weekend was not what I expected it to go like, even considering we had two days of testing on Monday and Tuesday. Then we come to the race weekend and we lost lap time. So, for me it was hard to accept this.
“We worked very hard to try and solve our problem, but we really never got anything to help us through the weekend. It was hard. We need to understand why it was different, we need to understand why we are suffering more than with last year’s bike.
“There have been some changes on the engine and the bike, so we need to understand why this happening because the potential is more. Then in the last race of the weekend, I just had no grip, the brakes where not working so well and the engine overheated. That is just how it goes.
“There is not much more to say. We need to work, understand and try to come back stronger because we don’t deserve to be in this position.”
