Oulton Park misery for Lowry

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 last weekend for Moira’s 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.

Ian struggled 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.

“It has been a very disappointing weekend for me and the Padgetts team at Oulton Park,” said ian. “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.

“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.”

A brace of top six finishes was good enough for Lisburn rider Michael Pearson, in Saturday’s incident packed Tandragee 100 road races, at a meeting that Pearson admitted was demanding, with the former ISB Champion still suffering from the side effects of his prang at the Cookstown 100.

A hard fought sixth place in the Open Superbike race was followed up with an equally difficult fifth place in the Tangragee 100 Superbike race, when Pearson was again locked in a ding dong battle with Dublin’s Derek Sheils.

But it was in the Supersport 600 race that Pearson felt the cruelest of luck besought him when with only half a mile to go on the final lap, his D&GW/Carryduff Forklifts Yamaha lost all power while holding on to third place. Pearson eventually got his Yamaha fired up again but it was all to late as he limped over the finish line in tenth place.

“I have sore ribs from my Cookstown crash and when out in practice, the big Honda bottomed out in the bomb hole section of the circuit and I took an awful knock on my already bruised ribs,” said Michael. “We decided to give it a go and went out in the Open Race. I was locked in a battle for most of the race with Derek Sheils as we were more or less equally powered and neither of us was for giving in. We swapped places time and time again, but in the end Derek was able to hold me off and we had to settle for sixth place.

In the Supersport 600 race coming out of Coily Hill on the last lap in third place the Yamaha lost all power and that was it.

I was just glad to get the day over safely. Now we have a bit of a break and my next outing will be at Horice in the Czech Republic where I am really looking forward to returning again.”