Having racked up championships at BSB and World level, grand prix winner Sam Lowes is eyeing up Moto2 for his tally.

WORDS: DANGEROUS IMAGES: ROBGRAY/POLARITY

RACE FEATURE

Speaking from experience, growing up in Lincolnshire leaves you with three career choices: cattle farmer, tractor driver or motorcycle racer. The county’s disproportionately rife with all three, but among the shire’s many great two-wheelers that’ve ruled on the roads and the tracks over more decades than you can count on a hand – even with the extra fingers – is a certain Sam Lowes.

If you’re into your bike racing, neither Sam or his twin brother Alex – Pata Yamaha WSB rider – should be unfamiliar names, having both grafted their way to the top as organically as it comes. They didn’t come from money, they weren’t spoon-fed caviar and they certainly haven’t had it easy. What they did have was a burning ambition to be the best, the unrelenting support of a close-knit family, plus a bright red Citroën C1 to terrorise the neighbourhood. Sexy it wasn’t, but it did the job and powered the twins throughout their humbling ascension, which was often more stymied than a game of snakes and ladders with half the rungs missing – the highs were enormous and the lows were, well, proper low… and plentiful. Smashed bikes, consumed budgets, the threat of losing rides – they faced it all but they never lost faith.

Despite being identical, the twins cut their own paths and faced their own setbacks.

It was in 2009 that I found myself as Sam Lowes’ team-mate – twice. We both felt obliged to leave one team and lodged happily among the welcoming ranks of Pete Bradshaw’s Co-Ordit Racing outfit. By this stage Sam was already a British Supersport front-runner and within a year he’d achieved the impressive feat of becoming Supersport champ. The world was his oyster and, faced with the threat of a lifetime driving combine harvesters or milking Daisy (all cows are called Daisy), the youngster needed no encouragement to stretch his wings and join the best from the rest in the World Supersport paddock. It was a defining move that he proved to be the right path by bagging a podium in the opening race of the year in Australia, before making a further five visits to the podium in that inaugural season on his Parkalgar Honda. Finishing sixth in the 2011 championship, he upped his game to third the following year, before achieving his dream and reigning supreme in 2013. Job done, right? Not by a long way…