Scott Redding is aiming to at least match last ye🅰ar's best result for the Aprilia RS-GP during his debut 2018 🌳season with the factory team.

"I want to put the Aprilia in the top six, last year Aleix [Espargaro] 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 parꦆts coming like the new engine," said the Englishman.

"We still have some testing to do, after that my main priority w🧔ill be to keep improving the bike race by race and try to be as co💧mpetitive as possible".

Redding - joining Aprilia after stints at Gresini Honda (2014), Marc VDS Honda (2015) and Pramac Ducati(2016-2017) - got this first taste of the new Aprilia during the 🐷recent Sepang test.

The former Moto2 title runner-up left Malaysia just 23rd on the timesheets,ꩵ nine places and 0.887s behind the best lap by Espargaro.

"The test in Malaysia has been a sort ✤of shakedown. At the beginning, when we simply put the 2017 setting o꧋n 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 foꦆr the future🐟.

"I've been faster every day, cutting the gap with the front🦄 guys and I feel th♍ere's still a lot of room for improvements".

Espargaro c🦩laimed the RS-GP's best MotoGP result of sixth at both Qatar and Aragon 𝕴last season.