The seventh round of the Superbike World Championship got underway today at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari di Imola.
Competing for the Yamaha Motoxracing WorldSBK Team, Bradley Ray has never visited the Italian track until now and so used the first free practice to learn the track and start to work on the set-up of his Yamaha together with his technicians. With a time of 1’49”144, the English rider concluded FP1 in twelfth place.
In FP2, which ran in the afternoon, Bradley was able to improve on his earlier time by more than a second, setting a 1’47”982 that saw him round out day one in eleventh place. An excellent result if we consider that the Yamaha Motoxracing WorldSBK Team is riding at Imola for the first time. Tomorrow Ray will be back out for Superpole and Race 1.
"I’m pleasantly surprised by our rider’s result today. Imola is not generally an easy track to learn, particularly if you’ve never seen it before, but Ray seemed immediately at ease here. I want to congratulate the entire team for all their great work.”
“I’m really pleased with my first day at Imola. I’m amazed I was able to learn such a technical and challenging track so quickly. We’re not far from the frontrunners, some of whom used qualifying tyres. So I’m pleased with the progress made and with our race pace. For tomorrow we need to focus on Superpole so that we can run a good race. A big thank you to the team for all their hard work today.”
