Lowes says Spanish GP "embarrassing" and "worst race of my life"

The Brit had qualified 22nd of 23 riders on Saturday, ahead only of Suzuki stand-in Takuya Tsuda, but his qualifying effort was compromised by a fuel pump issue - and he said he was encouraged by his race pace and his progress throughout the weekend.

Yet on Sunday Lowes went on to finish a distant 16th, more than half a minute down on teammate Aleix Espargaro.

When asked to describe his race, Lowes said: “Shit. No, [it was the] worst race of my life. Disaster.

 “It was embarrassing how far away we were from where we have been all weekend. So we need to try and understand some things.

 “I couldn’t ride the bike, I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do with the bike so it was a disaster really.”

Despite his frustration, Lowes said he hoped a post-race test would offer some answers to his lack of pace, with conditions expected to be similar to those he experienced during the race.

“Tomorrow’s test looks like it is going to be hot which is going to be good because that race was. I really struggled for grip front and rear and we need to see why.

“[Today] was the first time in this heat, but yesterday in FP4 the track temperature was 44 degrees, only three degrees more.

“It shouldn’t affect the bike that much and I don’t know, the pace of everybody was quite slow comparative to the weekend so we need to understand why.

“My pace has been quite good and I just need to find the answers from the race and try and fix them tomorrow.

“I can take the positives I’ve had before today and then see what went wrong so we’ll try and work tomorrow and find some more answers. We need to.

“After that performance there’s no point testing new stuff until I get the most out of what we’ve got now.”