The shockwaves from Bradley Smith’s no-show in British Supersport are still reverberating around the world of racing. Here we investigate the BSS series and ask why Bradders might be too scared to show up.
What is British Supersport?
Bradley was scheduled to race in the GP2 category of British Supersport, which uses Moto2 bikes. Wait, what? Moto2 bikes are racing prototypes, so why are they allowed in the production-based British Supersport series?
Supersport was created so that youngsters on their way up to racing 1000cc Superbikes (and fading old geezers on their way back down) could race 600cc 4-cylinder sportsbikes. 600cc bikes were popular at the time, but are now as rarely sold as #38 Bradley Smith T-shirts. Kawasaki’s medium-sized sportsbike is now a 636cc 4-cylinder, Triumph want to sell their 765cc triple and Ducati’s middleweight offering is now a 955cc V-twin. Supersport had become a production-based race series based on the production of bikes that are no longer in production. (Admittedly this still makes more sense than most of the judgements handed down by Fast Freddie Spencer and the MotoGP Stewards).
The British Supersport organizers came up with a plan. They added a GP2 category that uses Moto2 bikes, which made sense because Moto2 bikes all ran 600cc engines back then so could compete fairly evenly with the 600cc production bikes. This let small British chassis manufacturers develop Moto2 bikes and hopefully sell them. Bradley Smith was in negotiations with Spirit Motorcycles to buy some of their Moto2 bikes for the Project 109 race team that he runs in Spain. This is why Bradley was allegedly going to ride a Spirit Moto2 bike in the BSS round at Snetterton, but allegedly didn’t show up, and was allegedly competing in the under-12s 50cc category at a motocross event instead.
Why would Bradley be scared to ride in British Supersport?
Some motorcycle racers are so hell-bent on overtaking everything in front of them that they will flat-out terrify anyone not used to their level of aggressiveness. In British Supersport, these riders are called “backmarkers”. The guys at the front are far more aggressive and constantly fight like ferrets in a sack. Angry, rabid ferrets who have recently escaped from a veterinary lunatic asylum and zapped their nuts on an electric fence on the way out.
This YouTube video shows the last one and a half laps of a British Supersport race at Brands Hatch a couple of years back.
Clearly, there was more close racing in that lap and a half than Bradders has managed in his whole racing career. In fact, the last time anyone can remember Bradley even attempting an overtake is the time he rammed his own Aprilia team-mate Aleix Asparagus at Barcelona in 2019.
Who would Bradders have been competing against?
Let’s have a brief look at the top 4 finishers who were covered by less than a second in the British Supersport Sprint Race at Snetterton to see what Bradders wasn’t up against.
1. Lee Johnston. Northern Irishman who is only racing in BSS because his preferred road races were all cancelled this year. Seems to find the series a bit tame compared to narrowly missing pubs and lamp posts at 130mph.
2. Ben Currie. One of those hard-charging Australians who were lucky enough to escape their oversized, snake-infested country before it turned into a combination of Idiocracy and The Man in the High Castle.
3. Jack Kennedy (featured in the above YouTube vid). Looks and sounds like one of the rough ones from the Irish boyband Boyzone. (Y’know, the ones that you suspect only showed up at the audition to case the joint and were unexpectedly hired to add a bit of masculinity to the band).
4. Kyle Smith. Left Yorkshire when he was a kid more than 2 decades ago, but sounds like he only left 40 minutes ago. Grew up in Spain and thrived despite that country’s baffling lack of flat caps and racing pigeons.
What about the Snetterton track?
It’s a good track, but it’s long at 3 miles and Bradley doesn’t seem to have ever raced there. Learning a new track while racing against a crowd of hooligans like British Supersport riders would require some serious moral fibre.