Lydd racer Bradley Ray confident of improvements after incident-packed World Superbike Championship round for Yamaha Motoxracing at Assen

Bradley Ray showed plenty of promise despite an early end to his World Superbikes debut for Yamaha Motoxracing.

Last year's British Superbikes champion only made it as far as lap two in race two at Assen in Holland before crashing out on his Yamaha YZF R1. The Lydd racer had finished race one in 18th place.

“My first weekend in WorldSBK has been positive," said Ray. "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 understood 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.”

Ray began the weekend in quick-learner mode, improving his fastest free-practice time of 1min35.892sec by more than a second in his first Superpole session of the year to line up for race one 18th.

Having made a good start, he began to make up positions and climb up the field. Unfortunately, having reached 14th place, a drop in front tyre performance forced him to reduce his pace.

Sunday's Superpole race - Ray's first experience of the sprint format - was reduced from 10 to eight laps after another rider left oil on the track during the sighting lap, with Ray finishing 16th.

He got away well as the lights went out for Sunday's final race and immediately made up some places before crashing out of contention on lap two.

"Due to a series of unexpected events, we were unable to achieve the desired results," team principal Sandro Carusi added. "But we will try to harness this experience as we prepare the best we can for the