From his stunning debut win at Thruxton race circuit a couple of weekends ago the tables took a turn for the worst at Oulton Park this weekend for Ian Lowry. The rescheduled Brands Hatch race took place on bank holiday Sunday at Oulton and Ian was forced to retire with a technical problem on the Padgetts Honda.

The Ulsterman has struggled over the weekend at Oulton Park to find the few tenths he needed to put him up at the sharp end of the field and he ended up qualifying for race one on Monday in ninth position. The heavens opened and the rain fell about an hour before the scheduled race, the teams were allocated a ten minute wet practice which led straight into the race and did not allow for many changes to be made to the bikes. Ian opted to run full wets and in the latter stages of the race the track rapidly dried out and Ian dropped backwards down the field and out of a point's position finally bringing the Padgetts Honda home in 21st place.

With the rules stating the fastest laps from the opening race decide the grid for the second race this left Ian in 23rd position for his starting place for race two on Monday. Leaving him with a massive amount of work to do from near the back of the grid, Ian got his head down and worked his way through the field and finally finished in 13th place, he is now lying in 5th position in the Championship standings.

Ian - "It has been a very disappointing weekend for me and the Padgetts team this weekend at Oulton Park, we never seemed to be able to get into a good rhythm. What everyone has to remember is that this is the first year in Superbikes for Padgetts, every other team on the grid have some sort of set up and data logging from previous years so they have a base to work from. Every track we go to we are starting from scratch and some are going to be good and some not so good, Thruxton was good, Oulton was not so good. It is a long season and it's a learning curve for all of us in the team we have to take the positives and work on the negatives for next time. I know I have to try and keep getting consistent points and it's important to be into the top six for the final showdown, hopefully we can get things sorted for Snetterton at the end of the month. I must also thank everyone who got behind me on Facebook and Twitter to get me some new leathers, I must say a massive thank you to Alpinestar for coming up with a deal and I'm just disappointed I couldn't give them a good result this weekend."

2012 Ian Lowry Personal Sponsors

Alpinestar - Shark Helmets - Lowe Refrigeration - Gas Racing - Jon Jessop Photography - Freestyle Extreme - Padgetts Honda