Alex Lowes made a decent start to his debut MotoGP™ outing at Silverstone on Friday, where he closed the day in 19th position - just 1.282s behind his new teammate for the weekend Pol Espargaro.
The stand-in rider, who is replacing the injured Bradley Smith in the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team for this race and the visit to Misano next weekend, kicked off the day by using the morning practice to take the first steps in adapting to the YZR-M1.
The young Briton’s progress was significant and when the afternoon session began, he continued his efforts. Here, Lowes notably produced a lap that was 2.370 quicker than his personal best from FP1, which also left him right in the hunt with the satellite MotoGP™ riders in FP2. On Saturday, the 25-year-old aims to make further advances ahead of his first MotoGP™ qualifying shootout.
Alex Lowes: “I really enjoyed my first day and I am excited for tomorrow, with the main aim being to continue improving. Unfortunately, I made one small mistake this morning, and crashed in the last lap of FP1, however, due to the timing, it luckily meant that I didn’t lose any precious track time. Anyway, the team did a great job with fixing the bike, so I have to say thanks to them. FP2 went a lot better and I started to understand the bike more, which raised my confidence.
“I still have a lot more to learn but I feel that I made some big steps forward. Day one is out of the way so I’ll digest what has happened and I will think about some areas of improvement from my side for tomorrow. I am certain that we can be closer to the front in the next few days, and I want to get as near as possible to Pol. However, I have to stay realistic and I know that the faster you get, the harder it is. I think I did quite a good job today so thanks to the team for their great work and I’m looking forward to pushing more tomorrow.”