Redding Signs with Gresini to Ride Honda RCV1000R MotoGP Production Racer

Current Moto2 points leader Scott Redding has signed a two-year contract to race in the MotoGP class for the Go&Fun Honda Gresini team. The 20-year-old British rider will join Alvaro Bautista on the Gresini team riding the new Honda‘s new production racer the team reveals will be called the RCV1000R.

Redding leads the Moto2 championship for the Marc van der Straten racing team with 167 points, a comfortable lead of 21 points ahead of Tuenti HP 40‘s Pol Espargaró with seven rounds to go. In 2008, Redding won the 125cc class race at Donington Park at the age of 15 years and 170 days, becoming the youngest racer to ever win a Grand Prix.

“I am looking forward to the challenge of MotoGP next season. I’ll be racing alongside the best riders in the world, aboard the brand new Honda RCV1000R, so I know already how steep a learning curve it’s going to be,” says Redding. “This was why it was so important to me that I made this step with an experienced team, and there are few more experienced in the MotoGP paddock than Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini. But my focus now is on winning the Moto2 World Championship for Marc van der Straten, without whose support over the past four years I wouldn’t even have been given this opportunity to move up to the premier class.”

As for the RCV1000R, Honda’s new production racer is based on the RC213V prototype currently being raced by Bautista, LCR Honda’s Stefan Bradl and the Repsol Honda factory riders Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa. The RCV1000R will have conventional valve springs unlike the RC213V’s pneumatic valves, nor will it have the prototype’s seamless transmission. As a non-Factory option, the RCV1000R will run on the spec ECU software and have access to 24 liters of fuel compared to the 20 liters allotted for Factory machines.

[Source: Gresini]

By Dennis Chung