The first day of Moto2 action after the summer break produced contrasting fortunes for the Elf Marc VDS Racing Team, with Tony Arbolino challenging close to the top three but a left shoulder dislocation has ruled Sam Lowes out for the remainder of his home round at Silverstone. 

• Ninth in FP1 and fourth in FP2, Arbolino enjoyed an excellent opening day of Free Practice at the long, fast, and technical 5.9km Silverstone track.
• Arbolino is back in action tomorrow morning at 1055am local time for the FP3 session that will decide the top 14 riders who go directly into Q2.

/// SAM LOWES

• A crucial home Grand Prix for Lowes ended in pain and disappointment after the Silverstone fan favourite was declared unfit following a heavy crash in the early stages of this morning’s FP1 session.
• Lowes dislocated his left shoulder in the incident at Chapel Curve (Turn 7) and after treatment in the circuit medical centre he was unfortunately declared unfit and will continue additional treatment in the next few hours.

“I’m disappointed because I wanted to do well for the British fans”

“It’s very sad for me to miss my home Grand Prix through injury. Whenever you crash there’s always a risk of getting injured. It is part of our sport and unfortunately, it’s happened to me today. Having not ridden for a while and with the cooler temperatures this morning, I just got caught out with the kerb. It flicked me quite aggressively and unfortunately I dislocated my left shoulder. The medics here did a fantastic job to pop the shoulder back into position and I will see a specialist tomorrow to understand fully the extent of the damage. I feel terrible though. This is not any race. It’s my home race and yesterday I got some amazing support from the British fans, and I wanted to do well. It has happened and I can’t change it, so we’ll see the specialist and hopefully I’ll be fit enough to ride in Austria.”

/// TONY ARBOLINO,  4^th, 2:05.149, 30 laps

• Just 48 hours after celebrating his 22^nd birthday, Italian Arbolino immediately found his confidence and pace after the summer break to work exclusively on Dunlop’s hard compound rear tyre in FP1 this morning.
• Less than one-tenth outside of the top six this morning, Arbolino improved by the huge margin of 1.4s in FP2 to finish the day in a strong fourth position overall going into qualifying day tomorrow.

“The improvement from FP1 to FP2 was impressive”

“This has been a very positive day for me and a great way to come back from the summer break. The improvement we made from FP1 to FP2 was impressive and that gives me a lot of confidence for the rest of the weekend. I improved myself and we improved the bike, but the good point is we still have margin to improve and I am sure we can be faster. I’d like a little more feeling from the front-end to having more turning and better corner speed, but we will check the data tonight and work on a plan. We have demonstrated already that we can be fast here and if we improve the bike, I am confident we can have a strong result on Sunday.”