Moto2: Sam Lowes, a win at long last

It’s been a long few years for Sam Lowes since moving to MotoGP in 2017, his MotoGP stint and Moto2 return didn’t go to plan.

Before 2020 kicked off, Sam Lowes had quite the reputation for crashing out of races, 6+ DNF’s in one season was not uncommon, yet flash forward to 2020 and he has just 1 DNF to his name (DSQ due to the crash which was caused) when he out braked himself in the Styrian Grand Prix, causing a multiple rider pile up.

Lowes signed for the Marc VDS squad for 2020 which was met with a whole lot of criticism, his wife is a team member and people were making this link quite frequently, forgetting that he is a 3 x winner in the class who had a tough year on the KTM for the Swiss innovators team which had money troubles all season, not paying riders or even mechanics for their work. This meant that Sam received no upgrades all season and was left to struggle on the KTM before moving to the Gresini team, a team which is a shadow of its former self.

The Gresini team was once a front runner with Lowes and Xavier Simeon plus various other riders, scoring race wins and podiums, but these days they are a mid-pack team, Lowes was hired to ‘MGGA’ – Make Gresini Great Again, but this was not the case taking a best result of P5 at Misano and Aragon, he took 9 x DNF’s in 19 races with 2 finishes outside of the top 20, suggesting crashes here also, therefore it was understandable for people to question why Lowes was hired by the Moto2 champions Marc VDS, but they saw something in him.

If anyone could squeeze the talent out of a rider, it was the Marc VDS team, instantly he jelled with the team, missing the first round at Qatar, he took 2 x P4 results at Jerez, his best result since Valencia 2016!! Remarkable really, before backing this up with a podium at Brno which was his first podium since Aragon 2016, the Aragon and Valencia 2016 races had 3 races in between, Lowes crashed out of all 3.

So far he has been on an upward trend, scoring 4 podiums in 2020 and has finally taken the race win, 1477 days after his previous race win which is a crazy stat to think about. He has been incredibly consistent with a worst result of P8 this season which is not bad considering he started from pit lane and was left to wait at least 2 lightyears before he was allowed to race.

He is on a consistent uptrend with no signs of stopping, he’s had his ‘Lowes’ these past few seasons, now it’s time to get back to the glory with the new Sam Lowes who seems to have eliminated his crashing demons.

Featured image – www.motogp.com