Speed Up’s Sam Lowes finished his Moto2 race at his home round at Silverstone in sixth, but it was current championship leader, AJO Motorsport’s Johann Zarco who took the win and extends his lead in the class.
The race was declared wet, but then the rain stopped and a dry line appeared at the track. Initially pace-setter Lowes had a poor start going from the number one spot on the grid, to fifth on the opening lap, and then slipped back to eighth in damp conditions. But at the flag Alex Rins won the fight for second, ahead of Tito Rabat.
But Lowes did have a crash in the warm up session earlier today, but he did re-gain his pace and was lapping the same times as front runners, Rins and Zarco with twelve remaining. The racers started out on wet Dunlop’s but then tyre wear soon set in as the tracked dried, but the Dunlop’s did hold up for the end of the 18 lapper.
When a dry line appeared some riders decided to pit and swap from wets to slicks, including Louis Rossi and Florian Alt, who was the first rider to take the gamble.
Lowes did push his Speed Up machine up to seventh with seven laps left, and was only one second off Luthi and was edging ever closer to the Swiss racer. But it was Zarco who continued to lead the way with a seven second advantage over Rabat and Rins at the top of the field.
But on the fourteenth lap, Lowes benefited from a mistake by Luthi and pulled his way to sixth. Further up the pack Rabat appeared to suffer with tyre wear and Rins was able to overtake to go up to second, and closed the gap on Zarco to four seconds with three laps remaining.
When the chequered flag appeared Lowes was unable to catch up to fifth place finisher Jonas Folger, but was able to bag some points today. Luthi and Ricky Cardus completed the top ten.
British wildcard rider, Bradley Ray crashed on only the third lap, but was declared OK at the trackside.
