Ray back to winning ways after “stressful” opener in BSB Oulton Park return

Bradley Ray was back to winning ways after toughing it out at the front of the final stages of British Superbikes highly competitive return to Oulton Park.

The McAMS Yamaha rider recovered to stay in touch with the early leaders, the bimota duo of polesitter Max Cook and his rookie team-mate Joe Talbot. Speaking to British Superbikes after the race Ray revealed that when in touch, we was happy to sit behind Cook, who eventually crashed out of the race while back in the pack:

“It was a solid race. I didn’t actually get the best of starts. The two bimotas got a real, real strong start and then Max, at a strong pace at the start of the race, which I was quite surprised at.

Managed to get through on Joe and reel Max in - and to be honest, I was quite happy to follow Max for as long as he wanted to lead. He made quite a small mistake at turn one, which then I thought, ‘right, I’m going to go through and see what I’ve got.’

Ray was well aware of the ever growing group around him - using messages on his pit board to keep an eye on the size. At it’s largest the pack was a six, with Leon Halsam, Kyle Ryde, both of whom went on to complete the podium, and Scott Redding in the mix after coming through with Ryde, while the in-fighting for position slowed the pace right up:

“At that point, Storm was able to get through down the back straight into Island, which sort of backed the pace up a little bit.

My board went from G2 to G5 and I knew people behind were coming, so tried to settle into a rhythm Leon was trying to get past Storm into the last corner and one lap just he went a little bit close to the white line. Leon had to roll off and I thought ‘ right, it’s my time to go’. Went round the outside into the last corner.

Got a good drive into turn one, back shifted to second to stop the old girl and then got through and just - I didn’t think I had that pace in me at the end of the race but was able to hit my markers and the last few laps were quite stressful.”

Ryde ended up as the rider to give late chase, taking Ray’s advantage down from over a second to 0.651s at the chequered flag, but the 2022 champion had done enough for a win- just his second of the season, this time at the home track for his McAMS team:

“I didn’t know who was behind me, but the board stayed quite consistent, the last lap - maybe not the best - but managed to bring it home.”

On being asked if he though the racing tomorrow for the sprint and final feature race would be similarly as close Ray added:

“Definitely in the sprint race. I think that’s going to be a fast race, a lot of passing and yeah, obviously another long race tomorrow gives people time to make some small improvements to the bike and see what everyone’s got.

But, yeah, super happy to get the win for the boys and we’ll try and be in the battle again tomorrow.”