Kent’s Brad Ray got his FIM Superbike World Championship campaign underway at ‘The Cathedral’ of motorsport last weekend.

Brad took to the grid on the Yamaha YZF R1 for the first time for the Moto X Yamaha team.

Having lined up in race one in 18th place on the grid, that would be where he would finish, although for large parts of the race he was up in the points in 14th and 15th place, but ultimately he was overtaken by his more experienced competitors and finished outside the points.

On Sunday morning for his first sprint race in WSBK, which would have been raced over ten laps it was reduced to eight due to oil on the track. Ray would come home in 16th place, an impressive result in his first sprint race of the season.

In the second feature race of the weekend unfortunately Ray was to be a non finisher, having made some good overtakes on lap one, he was to crash out on lap two. Putting to an end his debut season on board the Yamaha in the World Superbikes.

Speaking after his debut weekend, Ray said: “My first weekend in WorldSBK has been positive. We’ve made a lot of progress and constantly reduced our gap to the front.

“Unfortunately I crashed on lap two of the last race. But this doesn’t change the overall result of a round in which we have understand where we need to work, and we will continue to improve at the next Barcelona round in two weeks’ time.

“I want to thank the whole team for their hard work, and Yamaha and our sponsors for giving me the opportunity to race in WorldSBK”.