Lydd’s Brad Ray finishes the penultimate round of the Spanish CEV Moto3
Championship in fifth place after qualifying ninth.
Competing in his seventh race of the Spanish CEV
Championship season, Brad headed to the Portimao circuit high on confidence.
The Friday test sessions, which do not offer official
timing, saw the team working hard on the KRP/FAB-Racing FTR-KTM looking for the best set up for Brad to be able to push
hard and produce the fast times required to compete against the world class
field of 37 riders.
In qualifying Brad had the confidence in the set up to run
at the top end of the time sheets with a 1:50.571 lap placing him 8th quickest.
Q2 didn’t fair as well for the youngster as he dropped one place on the grid to
9th, just 1.7 seconds off pole man Fabio Quartararo's time after making changes
to the setup.
Brad (28) looking for a tow during qualifying...
The team reverted the changes ahead of morning warm up on
the Sunday, which gave Brad confidence ahead of the 16-lap race.
As the start lights went out on Sunday the ‘Bard’ made a
poor start, giving himself a lot of work to do. But after four laps he had
worked his way up to seventh, and was on the hunt for the leading pack.
He worked hard to move up the standings, but with a gap of
10 seconds to fourth place Brad had a lonely ride to the flag, eventually
crossing the line in fifth place.
After the race Brad said: “I caught the second group of
riders but it took too much time to pass them all and I realised that catching
the leading group was not going to happen so I was happy to settle for 5th
place and 11 points”
Brad now sits ninth in the Spanish CEV Moto3 Championship
with just the final round of the Championship in two weeks time at the Ricardo
Tormo Circuit in Valencia, that has a 2 race format for the Moto3, where Brad
will be hoping to round off 2014 with a heap of points.
Photography By:
CEV
