Brothers in arms
As if Barcelona 2024 didn’t have enough talking points already, there was a moment when the Lowes twins ran first and second in a World Championship motorcycle race for the first time. It was a proud moment for Sam and Alex, not to mention their respective wives Marina and Corinne. Should they ever manage a brotherly 1-2, they’ll be the first in World Superbike history to do so.
Sam and Alex are the first brothers to race together in WSBK since Spain’s Carlos and David Checa in 2009. Alex got off the mark best in Australia by claiming double victory at his first meeting since becoming team leader after Jonathan Rea’s departure from Kawasaki. At Barcelona, Sam led Saturday’s Race 1 in his and the Marc VDS Ducati team’s fourth race but threw the lead into the Turn 10 gravel. Despite the ending, it was an impressive outing.
“It was a mistake,” Sam stated, having overtaken Toprak Razgatlioglu for the lead but admitting that the Turk was taking things easy to preserve tyre life.
“It’s frustrating but nice to be at the front, learning a lot from these guys and understanding how I can do things better. My tyre definitely would have dropped as well, like Nicolo Bulega’s. You have to be really smart and clever in how you ride, but my current way of riding is using a lot of front tyre. I knew the end would be difficult but was enjoying it at the beginning,” he said.
Sam’s weekend culminated with 11th in the Sprint Race and 12th as his tyre dropped off in Race 2. At the home event for Kawasaki Racing Team, Alex pulled off a very strong damage limitation exercise for results of sixth-fifth-sixth on what is predominantly a Ducati track around which BMW’s Razgatlioglu and Michael van der Mark also faired very well. Having led the championship after Round 1 in Australia, Alex now sits second and is just 12 points in arrears behind Ducati’s Bulega.