Sam Lowes will start his home Grand Prix from pole position after a magnificent recovery at Silverstone. The Briton’s hopes looked to have been dashed midway through the session when his Speed Up ground to a halt but the long walk to return his motorcycle to the pits paid off as he snatched pole from Alex Rins.
The drama began to unfold twenty minutes into the session when the no.22 machine began to coast down the Hangar Straight, forcing Lowes to push it back to the pits himself. It soon emerged that the Speed Up had ran out of fuel and fortunately for the home favourite, there was still time to contest pole position.
The session had been largely dominated by Tito Rabat who spent half an hour on top of the leaderboard but his session would career downhill in the closing minutes. Firstly, he was knocked off pole position by Alex Rins, the Paginas Amarillias rider setting a 2:06.403, but to make matters worse, the defending champion was involved in a dramatic collision with Dominique Aegerter at The Loop and had to crawl away from his Kalex.
In amongst the mayhem, Lowes was back in business and with less than a minute to go, the crowd got the result they were praying for as Sam shot to the top of the timesheets, 0.058s quicker than Rins. Championship leader Johann Zarco also improved late to qualify third, relegating Rabat to the second row.
Thomas Luthi will start fifth ahead of Takaaki Nakagami, Jonas Folger and the impressive Lorenzo Baldassarri while Alex Marquez’s practice promise failed to materialise in qualifying, a crash keeping him down in ninth,
