Having struggled on the opening day at Phillip Island, Scott Redding made plenty of progress on day two to qualify 11th for tomorrow's Australian Grand Prix.

Having had so many difficulties in qualifying this year the Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS rider was able to make it through to Q2 automatically today, after setting a top ten time from combined free practice. It was an important step for Redding but, in a hugely competitive qualifying session, he wound up 11th despite being just half a second from the second row.

During the session the 22-year-old Briton struggled with his second set of tyres. Having felt that there was potentially another two tenths in the bike following his initial qualifying effort, a lack of feel from the rear and lots of sliding held him back and meant that he was the only rider not to improve at the end of the 15 minute session.

Tomorrow's race will be 27 laps and given the progress made over the first two days of the weekend Redding will be able to start from the fourth row of the grid confident of a good result.



Scott Redding: 11th – 1’29.499

"I feel that we've done a good job today, based on where we came from after yesterday. We're learning so much every weekend with this bike. We're always learning and we're changing the electronics and the settings every time looking for improvements. To go directly through to Q2 is something that we always try and do so I'm happy with that. Equally important is that we improved the lap time from this morning, not as much as we'd have liked, but with the second tyre I had a lot more spin and pumping so I couldn't realise the potential that I thought we had. In general I'm happy with the result today and I think that we can have a good race tomorrow."

Michael Bartholemy: Team Principal

"I think that today was a positive day because in the morning we gained six tenths of a second and made it through to Q2, which is always our target. It looks like the second tyre was a bit more difficult for Scott but it's still a good starting position for tomorrow. I think that he has a good rhythm because we've made a lot of fast laps here this weekend. I’m looking forward to a good race tomorrow."