Lowes feeling confident despite third row start

Sam Lowes qualified seventh on the grid for tomorrow’s San Marino Grand Prix and afterwards the Englishman was in high spirits despite running six tenths of a second off the pace of Johann Zarco. Having endured a miserable weekend at the Italian circuit last year Lowes feels much more confident on the bike although readily admits that the demands of Misano do not suit his Speed Up chassis.

“Last year this track was really horrendous for me but it’s better this weekend,” said Lowes. “If I can continue running this pace I feel that I can challenge the top guys. Turning is our biggest issue but I don’t think that this track suits our bike as well as some other tracks. Last year here and Germany were my worst races so we’ve made a lot of progress since then.

“It’s just not the perfect track for this bike, last year I qualified 25th, so today was a big step forward. We tried something in the morning session and it didn’t work well so we lost time with that and I think that if we’d made this direction [from qualifying] in FP3 we’d have been stronger and able to have a chance of the front row.

“I’m quite happy because coming into this weekend I thought it’d be tough. Looking to tomorrow’s race I think that the tyres are going to play a big role with the difference between the soft and the hard. The Kalex uses their tyres harder than us so it might be worth taking a gamble and using the soft tyre in the race.”

Lowe lost his fastest time of the session after running wide at turn 12 and afterwards he commented that he wasn’t sure why he lost the time but that it would have made very little impact to him for tomorrow’s race other than moving him to the second row rather than the third row. As it stands he’s confident that in the race he could be a contender and able to use the soft tyre.

“Our pace is good and if we can improve it tomorrow we’ll have a chance. I think it’s going to be very difficult to win but it’s possible to be there.”