Redding: I've got to 'do a Marquez'

"Marquez has f****d it up for everyone," Scott Redding laughs. "You're meant to build into a rookie MotoGP season step by step. You're not meant to fight for the podium on your first race, or win your second.

"What he did was phenomenal, but it doesn't put pressure on me for my rookie year - it just shows what needs to be done. In my eyes, you go out there to prove a point. OK I'm not going to be on the same level bike, but I'll carry the same attitude. I won't be fazed by the occasion or who is around me."

It's a statement that sums up Redding. For all his candour, his laid back demeanour, his words - and his character - are edged with the steel of certainty. Redding might come across as a joker, but on track he's anything but.

At just 21, the Briton's star is rapidly rising. He's a Marquez beater, and was courted by both Ducati and Honda as he explored his options for stepping up from Moto2 to the premier class.

Where some would baulk at choosing between two factory outfits, Redding was typically forthright.

"Ducati wanted me quite badly, but I didn't want Ducati," he says. "There was no real reason for me to go there. They could have given me a good wage, sure, but I was 20 and with my whole career ahead of me.

Ducati chased Redding, but he preferred to link up with Honda and Gresini

"I asked them to tell me which riders had gone to Ducati and moved forward, except Casey Stoner. They couldn't. That didn't give me confidence as a rookie; the package wasn't right for me."

Instead a move to Honda beckoned, with Redding sealing a deal to ride a Gresini-prepared production RCV1000R in the Open class. Days later he triumphed in his home Moto2 event at Silverstone to move into a seemingly commanding position in the championship.

If that was the zenith of 2013, the nadir wasn't far around the corner. Yamaha protege Pol Espargaro began pegging him back in the title race, meaning it all came down to the final three rounds, starting off at Phillip Island.

Redding entered the weekend with a nine-point advantage. He left with a 16-point deficit and a fractured left wrist, his title hopes hanging by threads.

Less than a week later, and still very much nursing his injuries, Redding was back scrapping at Motegi. He qualified 15th, targeting damage limitation. Instead, it all fell apart.

Tito Rabat dropped his bike in the middle of the pack on lap one, and Redding, unsighted and with no time to react anyway, had nowhere to go. He hit Rabat's machine and was flicked off. The race was red-flagged, but Redding couldn't restart. His title bid was done.

It all went wrong for Redding at Phillip Island last year

"For two minutes after the Phillip Island crash, I knew the championship was over," Redding reflects. "But then, even while I was still in the gravel, my wrist snapped - I had heard it, felt it break - I thought I could come back [on Sunday], or the week after in Japan.

"It had been a weird crash anyway. Dunlop had been having issues all weekend, and I had managed to keep working with it. But in one corner the rear started to spin, so I picked the bike up onto the middle of the tyre and suddenly it gripped. I was already sideways, and it bucked.

"I had surgery on Saturday, and even tried to come back to race but they wouldn't let me because of all the medication I was on - which was strange because they let Lorenzo come back in Assen. That pissed me off a bit.

"So I went to Japan to try and limit the damage, and I hit the floor again. That really got me down.

"I had done everything I could from winter through the entire season, as best as I could, and then suddenly back to back, in the two most important races of my life, I went down.

"Others got wiped out, but it had to be the guy with the broken wrist, fighting for the championship, who hits [Rabat's] bike.

Redding had some low moments as his 2013 campaign fell apart

"That got me thinking 'what have I done to deserve this?'"

Redding admits the sequence, and the loss of a potential title, affected him initially. But what about now?

"Once I started riding my motivation came bounding back," he smiles, demonstrating how his wrist has healed. "I think it has helped me actually."

That last line would be a platitude for many, but Redding means it. This is a rider who, even as a kid in Mini Moto, looked to "go where I would be beaten, in order to become better". Adversity is something to welcome and feed off; rivals merely benchmarks to overcome.

It's an ethos he adopts when referring to Marquez, against whom he has battled all the way through the junior ranks. Marquez now has the world at his feet, while Redding is yet to even set foot on the final ladder.

"We have similar mentalities - we don't like to give space to other riders, we don't have big egos. When we've raced, battles like Silverstone [in Moto2 in 2012], it has often come down to the last corner and neither of us will give ground [Redding pipped Marquez to second by just 0.059s in that particular race].

"I look at him as one of the toughest riders out there, and I look up to him because of it.

Redding battles with Marquez in Moto2 at Silverstone in 2012 © LAT

"We're the same age, and we've been with each other all the way through. The only difference in paths is the backing - he's been on good bikes since day one, while - before I joined Marc VDS at least - I was with some Spanish team that didn't care about me."

It might sound glib, but it's a serious point to consider. As Redding expands, "The trouble is in England there is no exposure. I stay in Spain and they have Alex Rins on the side of taxis and Maverick Vinales on tuna tins. I know that doesn't sound big, but it's those little things that put money into the system.

"I'm on the path now though, and my aim is to do two years with Gresini and then move into the factory teams. I want to sit on a factory bike and fight for the title. When I was talking with Honda, they said they wanted a future of me and Marc.

"It's up to me to go out, do a Marquez and make it happen."

Redding has the ability to match up to the rhetoric. Two podiums in his rookie season in Moto2 were followed by five in 2012 and, in last year's runner-up campaign, three victories and seven top threes.

Of those, few were as emphatic or sweet as his Silverstone victory, his final win before his year unravelled. Five years earlier, he made history as a 15-year-old 125cc rookie, becoming the youngest ever race-winner in the world championship as he battled to a maiden win in the wet at Donington Park (fellow 15-year-old Marquez finished third, his maiden podium...)

It is on home turf, Redding says, that he transcends the normal routine.

Redding and Marquez, both just 15, on the Donington 125cc podium in 2008 © LAT

"I just feel invincible for the four days I'm there. At home it feels like everyone there is rooting for you, and that makes a difference. That to me is why Spanish riders have a big advantage, because you have four home races. I get so much support that I feel nothing can happen to me.

"You put the extra few per cent that you normally keep on every lap. Suddenly you're not thinking about riding, it just happens. Normally you have a moment where you're like 'ooh f**k, back it off a bit'. But at home you don't, you go later and later on the brakes, earlier on the gas, and you get faster.

"I can't really explain the feeling, but it's like you're dancing with the bike."

The lapse into the poetic shouldn't be surprising. As a rider, Redding immerses himself in every detail of the weekend, in every nuance of the bike. Ask him about controlling a slide, and he can speak in remarkable detail about winding off the throttle and slowly shifting body weight to pick the bike up and onto the centre of the tyre.

At the same time though he remains an engaging, open and carefree maverick - and it is that jack the lad character which suggests he will take a rookie MotoGP campaign, and indeed what follows next, comfortably in his stride.

"People always ask me what I would be if I wasn't a rider," he says as a sign-off. "My answer is always the same: a gigolo.

"I'm joking, but it's only because I've never thought about it. I finished school at 12, and even at that age all I cared about was racing.

"I've always had that fire and determination to do something different, so I've never even contemplated what I'd do without racing.

"I've only ever had one goal, and it's been the same for most of my life. I want to be a MotoGP world champion. It's as simple as that."