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.