Just days after an impressive debut appearance at the Cremona circuit in Italy, Sam Lowes was back in WorldSBK testing action for the Elf Marc VDS Racing Team on familiar territory at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli this week.

• The Briton was exceptionally busy on the first of two days of official WorldSBK testing, with Lowes completing 91 laps while he fine-tuned the base setting of his Ducati Panigale VR 4 machine around the 4.2km Misano track.
• Fifth fastest at the end of play on day one with a time of 1:33.346, which was less than 0.2s away from reigning World Champion Alvaro Bautista in third, Lowes only completed 14 laps on a rain-hit second day due to illness.
• The Elf Marc VDS Racing Team will return to Misano for round four in this year’s WorldSBK Championship on the weekend of June 14-16.

/// SAM LOWES:  6^th, 1:33.346, 105 laps

“My race pace was very strong and that puts me in a positive frame”

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t complete too many laps today. I was feeling a bit ill and didn’t get much sleep last night, so I was only able to do a few laps. The short time we had on track was still valuable because we tried a couple of things that helped me in the fast changes of direction here. But then the rain came and stopped us going out for a few hours. We considered waiting for the track to dry but given how I’m not at my physical best we decided to call it a day. Overall, this test has been positive, and I feel once again we have made very good progress. My race pace was very strong and that puts me in a positive frame of mind for when we return to for the race.”