BMW Motorrad team principal Shaun Muir says he remains optimistic Scott Redding will bounce the manufacturer back into the upper echelons of the field in the coming rounds of the 2022 WorldSBK Championship after a difficult start to the season.
In what has been a sobering beginning for Redding in BMW colours, the Briton endured a dismal debut at Aragon that yielded just a single point, but showed glimmers of a breakthrough next time out at Assen when he ended the weekend with a fifth place finish in Race 2.
Having made the switch from Ducati over the winter, Redding has taken time to adapt to the high-revving nature of an unfamiliar inline four-cylinder set-up, which has hampered both his starts and corner entry.
With BMW trialling a method of reducing the power of his M 1000 RR in order to find a solid base setting before reintroducing the speed, Muir has every faith the ex-MotoGP rider will get to grips with his new steed before long.
“Scott’s characteristic feeling of the bike is very new, but we take on board his comments and we are adjusting the power to suit that,” he told the WorldSBK website. “What we’re finding is that he’s got a lot of power; we’ve introduced grip over winter with a lot of good chassis works, but it does give a very aggressive feeling.
“The front-end wants to paw the air a lot more and that’s where this feedback comes from about it being aggressive and fighting the bike all the time, so that’s a result of having the power and torque.
“That’s what we’re trying to work on with the chassis, hence lower and longer and with a much softer electronic approach in the lower gears.”
While Redding’s form has slipped below lofty pre-season expectations thus far, Muir is quick to defend the 12-time race winner for gritting his teeth and grafting hard to get back to form.
“Scott’s struggled in one area specifically and that’s with his starts, with the clutch technology we have; we’re trying to develop that around his needs.
“Quite clearly in Superpole, he was really off the pace but when you sit back and analyse that, I don’t want to be too critical of it. For sure, we’re not happy with it and for sure, we were gifted three places in the final race, but considering where we came from, you sit down and say, ‘well how did the rider perform?’, I’ll defend my rider in every case.
“We were pleased with the result [fifth at Assen] but no, we’re not pleased with being 15 seconds from the win, we’re not pleased with where we are in the Championship but with all facts considered, we came away from Assen feeling better than Aragon. We need to do more work but that’s what we’re targeting.”
