Scott Redding is aiming for consistent top six finishes aboard the Aprilia RS-GP after a successful first test of the year ahead of his maiden season with the Noale factory.
Redding lost his ride with the Pramac Ducati team after a difficult season on the 2016 Desmosedici – during which he failed to reach the top five in a race – to former Marc VDS man Jack Miller.
The 2013 Moto2 runner-up was thrown a lifeline by Aprilia after it cut ties with compatriot Sam Lowes halfway into his two-year deal.
While testing at Sepang proved to be fairly low-key for Redding, he is confident the new RS-GP has more potential than last year's bike and is keen to be a frequent top six contender.
“To keep going forward, developing the Aprilia, working a lot in testing with the new bike,” Redding said when asked of his ambitions for the new season.
“I want to put the Aprilia in the top six, last year Aleix has shown that it is a result within our reach and I think the new bike has even more potential, there are still some new parts coming like the new engine.
“We still have some testing to do, after that my main priority will be to keep improving the bike race by race ad try to be as competitive as possible.”
The test in Malaysia served as Redding's first experience of the '18 version of the RS-GP, having ridden the '17 bike in Valencia and Jerez at the end of last year.
Initially finding it difficult to adapt to the new bike, Redding ended the three-day test at Sepang having found “a direction to work on for the future”.
“The test in Malaysia has been a sort of shakedown, we had the new bike and I haven't been riding the Aprilia since Jerez,” he added.
“At the beginning, when we simply put the 2017 setting on the 2018 bike, it didn't work for me. For Aleix it wasn't a big difference, but he has a lot more experience on this bike.
“We started to work on that, even experimenting, to make me feel comfortable on the bike.
“At the end of the three days I was happy, we found some solutions that we'll keep using and, most important, we found the direction to work on for the future.
“I've been faster every day, cutting the gap with the front guys and I feel there's still a lot of room for improvements.”
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