“Second wind” takes Bradley Ray to second to keep title hopes alive at Brands Hatch

Bradley Ray came into Brands Hatch, home of the British Superbikes finale round, with a thirty point gap to climb, and a balancing act, needing to push for results while not being able to afford a DNF.

The weekend started well with a lap record for pole, but rival Kyle Ryde was ahead at turn one of race one, with Ray fighting back to hit the front on his Raceways Yamaha.

With Ryde out of contention, settling for third in the closing stages, a win as still elusive, after Scott Redding had come through form six, carefully passing the title rivals to take victory.

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Ray enjoyed the safe but plentiful passing of race one:

“It was a nice race. Pace was steady enough at the start and quite good. Obviously it’s the first probably twenty lap run anyone has done all weekend, so didn’t really know how hard to go at the start and wanted to try to save a little bit of rear tyre for the end, but yeah, it was a good race.

Ray made it clear on the grid that his first objective for the weekend was to finish in front of Ryde, which he did, but with only one position between them the gap only falls from 20 to 27 points, an improvement in the #28’s favour by three, with Redding taking care not to disrupt the title fight as he stormed through for the win:

“My first objective was to try and finish in front of Kyle. Got through on him and then honestly didn’t think I’d get Scott towards the end, but yeah, I got a second wind.”

Ray had a final attack to try and catch Redding, but could not quite reach the Ducati rider - setting the fastest lap of the race on the last for pole in Sunday’s sprint:

“The old caffeine gel kicked in with two laps to go and better late than never - it was nice to have that sort of pace towards the end of the race and obviously claw a couple of points back, but that’s all I can do in this situation - is to try and do that.

Really enjoyed the race. Nice clean racing and we’ll try again tomorrow.”

Like Ryde, Ray has concerns about the forecast for the final races of the British Superbikes championship:

“Obviously, the weather don’t look too great for tomorrow, but either way, we’ll go out and enjoy the last two races.”