Redding: “In MotoGP I got depressed, I lost my love for motorcycles”

October 18, 2021

San Juan Villicum.- The 28-year-old Briton won the second feature race of the WorldSBK weekend in Argentina , surprising the great dominators of the season, Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (Yamaha), who finished second and third, respectively.

Redding reached the series motorcycle championship in 2020, signed by Ducati to replace Álvaro Bautista , and in his first season he finished runner-up, behind Rea, with five wins and a total of fourteen podiums, confirming the success of the Italian brand when it came to ‘rescue’ him from the British SBK championship, to which he ended up in 2019 (he was champion in his first year with 11 victories) after leaving the MotoGP World Championship through the back door.

Born in Quedgeley , south of Gloucester , Redding had to compete in the Spanish Championship (CEV) in order to start standing out and attract the attention of the world championship paddock, which in 2008 gave him the opportunity to enter the 125cc category. In his first year, with the Blusens Aprilia Júnior (former Avintia) he managed to win, at only 15 years of age, in the British Grand Prix held in Donington, beating Mike Di Meglio and Marc Márquez , who was third.

His best years came in Moto2, where he made his debut in 2010 and was runner-up in the world in 2013, behind Pol Espargaró , achieving three victories and seven podiums that year, which opened the doors for him to the premier class in 2014 with a Honda of the Gresini team, with which he finished 7th on his debut, at the Qatar Grand Prix at the age of 21, and added his first podium (3rd) at Misano 2015.

After two seasons with the Japanese bike he was recruited by Pramac-Ducati , achieving his second and last podium (3rd) in Assen 2016. Two years later he made the jump to Aprilia, completing a 2018 to forget, in which his best position was the 11th place achieved in his last World Cup race, in Valencia , remembered for finishing it practically naked, giving away all his clothing to the fans in the stands.

It was not an easy year for Redding that 2018 with the unruly Aprilia, just landed back in MotoGP, with a lot of work and a long way to go.

“In MotoGP I came to think that I was not going to be able to achieve the results that were expected of me. And at that moment, my head went”, the British rider confessed this past weekend in San Juan in conversation with Motorsport.com .

A disconnection that led him to think about abandoning motorcycles, moving from the highest world category to the British SBK championship.

“If I had gone directly (from MotoGP) to the Superbike World Championship and finished 10th or 12th, I wouldn’t be here right now,” he reflected.

For Redding , spending a year in a tough category but without the demands of the World Cup helped him find himself.

“In the BSB I believed again that I could win, it was like being reborn, my confidence increased and I was convinced that running was what I wanted to do in my life”, he explained.

Redding contested 27 races in 2019, reaching the podium twenty times, eleven of them as winner, which opened the doors of WorldSBK for him.

“I came to the World Cup thinking I could win the title, and I really do. And that would have been different from coming from MotoGP (straight), where my head was like, ‘Shit, I can’t win races!’

Although the move has worked out for him, Redding does not want to fool anyone or himself, and admits that circumstances led him to the British national.

“Racing in the BSB is not really my choice, but I ended up there because in WorldSBK they asked me to pay to race, and I’m not going to do that. So going through the BSB was like a blessing”, he recalls now.

At only 28 years old, Redding has accumulated many experiences, not all of them good, and has gone through difficult situations, such as losing his bike for not being able to provide a sponsor, or having to hear that at his age he is ‘too old’ to race in MotoGP.

However, what conditioned the Briton’s career the most was feeling “depressed” and losing “the love for motorcycles”.

“The main thing was in my head, because in MotoGP I was depressed, I didn’t want to race, I didn’t want to be there,” he recalls after five years in the premier class.

“I didn’t like it, I lost my love for racing and my taste for motorcycles. People didn’t believe in me, they thought I was finished. I knew it wasn’t, but I had to prove it with results,” he stresses.

“I never had a big sponsor, I never had a lot of money to buy a good bike, so that meant I had to ride in the BSB and win the championship. And even though no one thought I could do it my first year, I did. And then they were convinced of what I could offer, and the WorldSBK teams became interested in me”, says Redding , who after two years at Ducati next season will race with the BMW team.