Having scored a victory each in the opening two rounds of the 2021 season, Redding failed to maintain that form on Ducati’s home ground in Italy, only managing a trio of fourth places across the weekend.
This ended his streak of scoring at least one podium every round since he moved to WSBK last year as the reigning British Superbike champion, and with five MotoGP seasons under his belt.
The 28-year-old believes he was not able to make enough progress through the weekend after finishing Friday practice nearly three-quarters of a second behind overall pacesetter and teammate Michael Ruben Rinaldi, who won two of the weekend’s three races.
“It was a hard weekend from the beginning,” said Redding. “We got off on a difficult foot, and never really improved, honestly. Just been fourth position every race. Sunday was the same.
“We improved the feeling of the bike from Saturday but we didn’t improve the pace that much. There was nothing I could really do.
“I thought maybe I could battle a bit with Jonathan [Rea] today [Sunday]. Especially after the Superpole race, I closed the gap a bit, but in Race 2… I had more pace in the beginning to stay with the front guys but then I had no grip with the front tyre and I just had to bring it home.
“It was a hard weekend for me, not in a comfortable position to push and fight for the front.”
Redding’s woes were compounded by a comparatively strong weekend for his title rivals Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu, with both riders pulling away from him in the championship standings.
Rea bagged solid points with a triple podium finish, while Razgatlioglu scored his and Yamaha’s maiden victory of 2021 in the second full-distance race of the weekend.
Moreover, Redding’s new 2021 teammate Rinaldi beat him in every race, winning the opening two encounters in dominant style before finishing second to Razgatlioglu to close out the weekend.
Asked about his contrasting results with that of Rinaldi’s, Redding said: “It was a triple whammy for me. My teammate was super-fast all weekend and you always wanna beat your teammate, but for the championship he’s not a big threat at the moment.
“But then Toprak was always in front of me and so was Jonathan, and they are in front of me in the championship. I just had to try and stay calm, try not to override and lose more points… it was just tough.
“There were no real good points. Qualifying was just saved by the qualifying tyre, warm-up, nothing special. They were the highlights but even then it was not great.”
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Kawasaki’s six-time champion Rea leads the riders’ standings by 20 points from Razgatlioglu, with Redding now a further 25 points adrift in third.
The Ducati rider feels he and his team have a tough task to win this year’s championship, especially with three different manufacturers involved in the fight.
“Toprak had some good pace this weekend,” Redding said of the title battle. “There’s 20 points between [he and Rea], I’m a bit further back. It would be nice to have a three-way battle and three different manufacturers.
“Hopefully I can come out on top, but at the moment it’s difficult, I’m not gonna lie. But we will work day and night to improve our situation because we have the capability to win races.”