Technical problems hampered Brad Ray’s progress in the latest round of the World Superbike season in Italy at the weekend.

Ray’s qualifying showed his promise and but for the technical issues he would have been sure to score points across the weekend. He qualified for the opening race in a solid seventeenth place.

However, he had to start at the back of the grid dur to a technical issue with his MotoxRacing Yamaha. This set him back unfortunately and despite the mechanics sorting the issue, he fought through to an 18th place finish.

On Sunday morning the superpole race saw Brad made a good start and he started to make up ground through the opening laps. The race was brought to a halt with a red flag on lap seven due to a crash, meaning Ray had to settle for a fourteenth place finish.

In race two on Sunday afternoon, Ray got off to a great start and was able to stick with the group battling for tenth place. This was the case until four laps from the end when unfortunately, he was forced to retire due to a trivial technical problem, that denied Brad what would have surely been a positive result and more championship points.

Speaking after the weekend Ray said: “We had a better race today and my feeling with the bike was better. I was able to stick with the group battling for the top ten or twelve, but then I made a mistake at one point which caused me to drop back, and Baz got past me.

“A small issue with the bike forced me to retire with only a few laps to go, which was a pity as it would have been nice to score some more points, but I felt we made a good step in that second race.

“Now we look forward to Donington, my home round, where I hope to score some good results.”