The 2023 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship featured breath-taking action from the Autodrom Most, with the Acerbis Czech Round’s WorldSBK action kicking off in far from ideal weather, resulting in a flag-to-flag race. Despite starting the Warm-Up Lap with wet tyres, a late decision to come into pitlane and change to intermediates would eventually pay dividends for Scott Redding (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team), who came through from a pitlane start to P4 in another mighty Most display by the #45.

There was an element of ‘not much to lose’ for Redding anyway, who lost his Superpole lap time due to it being set under yellow flags, meaning he was forced to go from row five and 15^th position. However, despite rain on the grid and before the race started, the track was drying quickly, so by the time the Warm-Up Lap was underway, Redding’s initial choice of full wets needed re-evaluating. Changing for intermediates, Redding came from the back to force his way into contention, battling with the likes of Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK). Fighting hard for P4 in the closing stages with Toprak’s teammate Andrea Locatelli, 30-year-old Redding was able to get through on the #55 after the Italian tried an ambitious overtake at Turn 20. Coming home in P4, it’s the joint-best result of Redding’s season so far.

Explaining the race and his last-minute decision to go for intermediate tyres instead of wets, Redding revelled in a tenacious fightback through the field. “It was quite an interesting race from the start! I was on the grid and I was like, ‘I can see it raining, stay with the wet tyre’ as it was risky wet weather. Then, on the Warm-Up lap, they guys on the intermediates had the same speed as I did with wets. I made the change then; anyway, I was pushed down to P15 after Superpole, so it wasn’t too much further back, I saved the time and changed.

“I had to come through a lot of people with not really a perfect circuit. I came through pretty quickly, I was up into P2 which I was surprised about, I was a man on a mission at that point! We needed to push hard for a podium but when Toprak and Petrucci came through, they just had a step more than me. I was pushing but not there. I was playing around with the mapping on the bike later on in the race to allow me to be faster but I was trying to save the intermediate as I did a whole dry race on that and it isn’t really normal. Maybe I saved a bit too much.”

Redding’s fourth place was an important one in the Championship, with him edging closer to the top ten and thus getting ahead of Honda rival Xavi Vierge (Team HRC). It also extends his advantage as top BMW overall ahead of Garrett Gerloff (Bonovo Action BMW), with the gap now at 24. For BMW in the manufacturers’ standings, they close down Honda, with the gap shrunk to three points.

With fourth place from last, it was a race to remember for the #45, who enjoyed the action and being able to make a difference: “I enjoy races like that, as if you start from the back and you’re coming through, it’s always fun because you’re like zero to hero and you can make it happen, and it’s good to be overtaking, feel competitive etc. At Most, I feel quite good anyway. We’ll see tomorrow as we start from 15^th position again which is unlucky after the yellow flags in Superpole. It’ll be hard that in ten laps, to get in the top nine to give ourselves the chance of a top five in the race.”

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