An exciting and tense Race 1 at MotorLand Aragon ended with a familiar sight in MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship: a Ducati machine claiming victory. Scott Redding (ARUBA.IT Racing – Ducati) started the first race of the Prosecco DOC Aragon Round from third before overtaking Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) on track to claim victory.

Redding’s teammate, Chaz Davies (ARUBA.IT Racing – Ducati) also had  a strong result as he battled his way up from ninth on the grid to second, even challenging Redding throughout the last laps, showing the pace of the Ducati around Aragon. On Friday, however, things did not look as good for Redding as he finished eighth in the combined classification as the third fastest Ducati machine; behind teammate Davies in first and Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Team GOELEVEN) in second.

Discussing the turnaround that meant he claimed victory from a front row starting spot, Redding said: “The feeling wasn’t great today but, in the afternoon, when we had Superpole and Race 1, the bike started to feel like my bike and I could use it how I wanted. The rest of the weekend, I’ve struggled a lot. You can see in the lap times I was struggling to go fast, and I really was not enjoying the weekend so far. The team did not give up on me and I didn’t give up on them, we worked together as a good team would, and we put together the package for the race.

“This was the first time I was running these lap times in the race, so it was a bit unknown, I didn’t feel super comfortable. I was worried about tyres, the guys behind me and I wasn’t really focused on my own lap time. I felt good, I felt like I could hold my own and that was the main thing. Going into the race, I felt like we needed to fight for a podium here. When we got off the start behind the Kawasakis I felt like I could win the race and that give me some motivation. I got passed by Jonny, I tried to make a gap but there was no gap coming. I was happy with him behind; I knew I had quite a good pace in the straights, so I didn’t have to always worry about battling.”

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