Motul Motostar Round 1 – Easter Weekend Brands Hatch Indy Circuit

Brad was at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit for the first round of the Motul Motostar British Championship last weekend, a round run over four days from Friday to Monday.    The Motostar class had 2 practice sessions on the Friday, the first Qualifying on the Saturday, the second on Sunday, with warm up and race on the Easter Monday.

This presented a problem to Brad who was testing with the Red Bull Rookies at the Motorland circuit at Aragon in Spain the week leading to this weekend and only finishing on Saturday.  As testing finished he and his dad drove immediately to Zaragoza Airport to fly to London Stansted and from their very “brisk” drive to Brands Hatch to arrive at just one minute before midnight.  Very fortunate before midnight as they close the circuit gates at midnight, any later, he and his dad would have been left to sleep in their car!!

This late arrival meant that Brad had missed the 2 practice sessions and 1 qualifying and he just had the second qualifying session on Sunday left to get used to the EE125 again and get a place on the grid. The EE125 is of course a 2 stroke and he had been riding the Rookies 4 stroke KTM all week.  Chalk and cheese really but Brad is one of the few riders that seems totally unfazed by this change from one to the other.

Saturday qualifying 1 had been run in bright sunny weather but Sunday turned out to be a day of rain.  Fortunately it is only necessary to set a wet qualifying time to get a place on the grid and Brad had to make sure that he did that, as it was he was fastest by 1.5 seconds so his time was the qualifying comparator.  As all the other riders had made the dry session it still meant a last row, 32nd, place on the grid.

Monday race day dawned bright and sunny. With a very short warm up of just 10 minutes getting a dry set up was almost impossible and we had to run with a “best guess”.

Unfortunately Brad fell at the end of this very short session with only 2 full flying laps completed.  He was completely OK and the bike had more or less no damage and just needed a good clean up.  A couple of super quick stops had already been made to remove blanking tape from the radiator to get the motor running at the correct temperature and all this meant that there was insufficient track time to get a handling setup.

   

The race was due to start at 3 in the afternoon but, due to several red flag incidents in previous races, it didn't start until about 4 in the afternoon and the race length was reduced to 16 laps instead of 22.

The EE125 made a very good start and Brad had taken it into 9th place by the end of 2 laps but then struggled to make further progress as he tried to close on the faster riders at the front. He was unable hold a good line on several bends with the bike running wide and suffering with front-end chatter.  Despite this he still made up more places and finally finished in 6th place overall in the race and 3rd place in the 125cc class.  Not too bad but not as good as it could have been.

At the next round, which for Brad will be round 3 of the championship at Snetterton with round 2 being missed as it clashes with the Spanish GP which is a Rookies round, we will have the 2 practice sessions, 2 qualifying sessions, and the warm up before the race and are much more confident that we can take not only win the 125 class but also take the win overall.

Thanks to all of Brad's sponsors including some new ones; Held Gloves, Forma Boots, Wiz Sliders and the 'usual suspects'; Shark, 151's, Engines Engineering, Eye Site Brighton, FAB-Racing.  A full list is on Brad's website www.brad-ray.co.uk

Thanks to Bonnie Lane for the photos

Brad Ray Plans For 2014

2014 is going to be one of the busiest years ever for Brad.  With the 8 round, 14 race Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup series, most rounds of the Motul Motostar British Championship event at BSB, riding for FAB-Racing, and several of the CEV Spanish National Championship rounds riding for KRP, he will hardly be off a race bike!

The Rookies bike is a standard KTM, the CEV bike is an FTR-KTM, both 4 stroke Moto3 bikes.   The Motostar bike, an EE125, is a totally different bike altogether.   A disc valve 2 stroke of the type that competed for many years in GP until the arrival of the Moto3 class, certainly not an easy bike to ride with it's very narrow power band.  Young Bradley, 16 years of age now, is one of the few riders that can go from one to the other with apparent ease.

 

As this is being written Brad has already completed a 3 day test session at the Almeria Circuit, where he rode 3 different bikes testing chassis set-ups for FTR, a 2 day pre-event test session for the first round of CEV at the Jerez Circuit (both circuits located in Southern Spain), the first round of CEV over 3 days, and is now at Aragon with the Rookies for a 3 day test. 

The Round 1 CEV at Jerez was difficult for Brad, the KRP team had several problems to contend with on the new to them FTR-KTM.   None of the problems were the team's fault, it was a case of coming up against problems that teams running the motor last year were already aware of.  They won't happen again as team boss Mark Keen has already taken measures to ensure they can't re-occur.

One of the problems was the cause of Brad's not so good qualifying that gained him only a  21^st place on the grid, and the other caused the bike to stall on race 1 just as the red start lights were due to change.   Fortunately all the riders behind him, there are 44 on the Grid so at least 20, succeeded in missing him.   Fortunately this was a 2 race event.

Race 2 was altogether more satisfying.   Starting from 21^st on the grid, Brad was able to work his way through the pack and eventually finished a very commendable 13^th.  It has to be realised that the level at CEV is extremely close to Grand Prix and is recognised as the final step, so it not so simple to get past riders that are also very fast.   It is often the case at CEV, where riders come from many countries, there are more entered riders than places on the grid and even very fast riders sometimes don't qualify to race.

For the Motul Motostar Round 1 on the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit this Easter it's going to also be “interesting”.   He will finish testing at Aragon with the Rookies on Saturday, fly back to the UK that evening, go straight to Brands Hatch having missed 2 practice sessions on the Friday and 1 qualifying on the Saturday, and take part in Q2 on the Sunday to qualify for the race on Monday!!   Remember he won't have ridden that bike since his win last October and it is totally different to the Rookies bike he is riding at Aragon.   Let's see how it goes.

Brad also had his pre-season eye check from the sports vision experts Eye Site in Brighton.  He has a clean bill of health and some new Oakley glasses and shades courtesy of Jim Green and the staff.