Bradley Ray was a relieved man to end the opening round of the British Superbike Championship at Silverstone with a podium finish after crashing out of the lead of the second race with seven laps to go.
Third in Saturday’s season opener, the Rich Energy OMG Racing Yamaha rider looked on course to take his third career BSB win only to run wide slightly at Luffield and crash out.
“I’ve had good pace all weekend but having led from the start, I just got a bit excited,” he admitted later. “It was my mistake but I had a bit of chatter and lost the front so I was really annoyed with myself.”
However, he more than made amends in the final race of the weekend when he took second place behind triple race winner Glenn Irwin, despite a couple of big slides almost eliminating him from the action for a second time.
“I certainly had a few big moments out there and at one stage dropped back to sixth and I knew I had to regroup quickly if I was to get back into the top three. I stayed calm though and managed to do that and I’m really happy to come away from round one with two podiums.”
Although the Silverstone National circuit is renowned for suiting the Yamaha, the 24-year old like teammate Kyle Ryde, looked a lot more at home on the R1 than he had done on the BMW M1000RR he and the team campaigned in 2021.
“You can carry lots of lean angle and corner speed with the R1 and it really suits my style of riding,” he said.
