Solid Home Round For Bradley Ray At Silverstone

Bradley Ray achieved fourth and fifth place finishes in the two Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup races this weekend at the Northamptonshire circuit, and moves up to fourth place in the Championship standings after dealing with a high-pressure home round.

Getting in the zone

The weekend started well for Brad after dialing himself in well on the Red Bull KTM RC250, he finished the second free practice in second position behind Jorge Martin, after a rain shower interrupted session, improving on his time set in the morning.

Qualifying didn’t go to plan for the young Kent man on Friday afternoon, after discovering problems with the front suspension Brad could only manage a time good enough to place himself in eighth position for Saturday and Sunday’s races. During the evening the team sat down and made minor changes to the machine to give Brad more confidence with the suspension ahead of race 1.

Before the start of race one on Saturday dark clouds loomed over the 3.6 mile circuit. Fortunately the weather held off for the start of the race and Brad got off to a good start, finishing the first lap in 7^th place and quickly chasing down the leading group. After a short burst of rain the race was controversially stopped on lap 5 after Brad had moved his way up to third position.

The race was restarted to run over just five laps on a dry circuit, leaving Brad with a tough job starting once again from eighth. Straight away Brad got his head down and had moved up to fourth place after the first lap. With two laps to go Brad had worked his way to second, but after battling it out on the last lap he lost out on a podium finish, crossing the line in fifth.

Under sunny skies on Sunday, Brad headed out for his last race of the weekend in high spirits and confident of taking a trophy home. Once again he made a good start, moving up into seventh by the end of the opening lap. The ‘Milky Bar Kid’ continued to make forward progress, catching the leading group where positions continually changed and saw Brad entered the final lap holding second place, but once again he lost out in the battle for the podium to Bo Bendsneyder in the final sequence of corners, taking the flag in fourth place.

Brad heads Ollie Simpson & Oscar Gutierrez

Speaking after race two, a frustrated Brad said: “ I did everything I could again, I thought I was in the right place on the last lap, chasing Manzi down to Brooklands in his slipstream but then I got slipstreamed had a moment on the brakes and just missed out. Still I tried as hard as I could and it was another great race.”

The youngster now moves up to fourth place in the Rookies Championship standings on 118 points, and will now move onto the ninth round of the Motul British Motostar Championship at Donington Park this weekend, where Brad will complete two races after the cancelled race at Cadwell Park.

Photography By:

Bonnie Lane

Words By: 

Michael Burton