Redding held back by chattering woes in Sepang test

The British rider lost out to teammate Danilo Petrucci last year in an intra-team battle to ride the latest-spec GP17 bike, and goes into the new campaign riding the 2016 version of the Desmosedici. 

In his first test outing of the year, Redding struggled for pace and ended up 19th on the combined timesheets, 1.277s off the pace and three tenths slower than Petrucci on the newer machine.

Redding in particular said his potential was masked by chronic chattering, a phenomenon where the bike judders while leant over as the tyre repeatedly gains and loses grip in a turn.

“We improved a little bit the feeling and the turning of the bike, but what we’re still struggling with is chattering, especially when I put in a new tyre and go for a laptime,” he said.

“I had really bad chatter at Turns 5 and 12, this hindered me a lot and in the end it was just impossible to ride and we had to give up on the laptime.

“With used tyres I improved quite a lot; I was stringing together five or seven laps and felt more comfortable.

“The problem was when I went for that one [fast] laptime I had chattering that was so bad I couldn’t even make the corner, so the whole laptime was gone."

The 24-year-old did say the test wasn't a total write-off, however, as he was able to make some favourable adjustments to the GP16.

“Apart from that [the chattering] it’s been not too bad," Redding added. "I’ve found some things that helped me with the braking, the turning.

"There were some positives, the laptimes don’t really show what our full potential was.”

Redding is working with a new crew chief in 2017, Christian Pupulin, following Giacomo Guidotti's switch to Repsol Honda to engineer Dani Pedrosa.

Pupulin previously worked with factory Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso from 2013 to 2015.