MotoGP: Lowes looking to regain previous momentum

Sam Lowes is going into this weekend’s opening round of the second half of the 2017 MotoGP season looking to regain the momentum that he built up in the first half of the year, after a strong weekend at the Sachsenring a month ago.

The Brit has been on a steady upward trajectory with the Gresini Aprilia in his rookie season in the premiere class, and says that this weekend’s target at Brno is to keep that going with further improvement on the RS-GP machine.

“In the last races before the break, my feeling with the RS-GP improved a lot. Now I feel like I can ride the MotoGP bike the right way. There is constant improvement and I want to continue on this trend. Brno is a track that I love. I did good races there in Moto2 and last year I finished on the podium. These are the best conditions for returning to the track after the holidays.”

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His sentiments were echoed ahead of this weekend’s race by teammate Aleix Espargaró, who says he’s excited to see the developments made by the Aprilia engineers over the break.

“In the first part of this break I unplugged. Between the tests and the races, the first part of the season was rather demanding for us, so it was a good chance to take a rest. I am ready and stoked. I know that the guys at Aprilia have worked hard over the past weeks to improve the RS-GP and we will resume our trend of growth at Brno.”

But while he admits that they’ve made interesting steps forward with development in the last four weeks, Aprilia team boss Romano Albesiano concedes that he’s expecting a challenging weekend for his duo at the Brno circuit.

“The first part of the season ended well for us and picking up after the summer break, we will be facing a series of tracks that are very demanding on the engine. We will have a few development steps that we believe are quite interesting. Brno, in particular, is a track that puts the engine and chassis architecture to the test, whereas it tends to be less critical from a braking point of view. We are expecting a hot weekend in terms of weather, with Sunday being especially unpredictable. But we are ready to take on any conditions.”

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