Frustrating weekend for Lowry

Once again the long Brands GP Circuit was a new adventure for the Padgetts Honda team and they were starting on the back foot with no testing at the circuit and no data from previous years. The Moira man was unlucky to crash out heavily during race one but secured eighth place in race two.

Despite this they worked extremely hard to find a good set up for the Irishman over the weekend and losing a day on Friday as they were only allowed track time on the shorter Indy Circuit, it was always going to be difficult to play catch up at this point in the season. Ian’s times dramatically improved all weekend and the team have hopefully found a good working set up for the final round of the Championship in October.

He got through to the second stage in the Superpole qualifying session but had to settle for 12th place on the grid for the first 18-lap race on Sunday. He gained a fantastic start and was through to seventh after the opening lap and was looking strong for the race setting some good lap times. He was unlucky to crash out at the first turn on lap five, he was uninjured but the Padgetts Honda looked very second hand leaving the mechanics plenty of work to do before the race two.

His time in the first race placed him up one on the grid to eleventh; he gained another good start and moved through to eighth after lap one. He was unable to stay with the leading bunch but was fending off the attacks from behind from Alex Lowes and Tommy Bridewell. Lowes got past Ian on lap 14 for seventh and Bridewell snuck through on the last lap and pushed Ian back to eighth on the line by 0.001.

Ian said: “It was another frustrating weekend; it is difficult with it being a rookie year for the Padgetts team as they have no previous data unlike most of the other teams. We had to start from scratch on Saturday and with two practice sessions and the qualifying sessions it made the turn around very quick and also difficult. We did work really hard all weekend and I was gutted to crash out of race one, I’ve struggled this year with a few tyres that haven’t worked for me and I just tucked the front into turn one and down I went, it was a big fast crash and I’m lucky I walked away with just a few bruises. We changed a couple more things for race two after the mechanics worked really hard to re build the bike and I was being pushed hard by Tommy (Bridewell) most of the race, I knew he was there and he was just able to out drag me to the line. I’m a bit gutted with the results and hopefully we can make amends at Cadwell Park next month.”

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