Fresh from his fifth place in the Suzuka 8 Hour race one weekend earlier, Alex Lowes continued to impress in Malaysia despite the difficult circumstances that have blighted his World Superbike season in 2015. At Sepang, the 2013 British Superbike Champion achieved respective results of sixth and eight places in the two races.

“It was a difficult day, but I feel like I rode really well,” Lowes said on Sunday night. “I’m disappointed with the sixth and eighth results on paper but, riding-wise, I think I did a good job. Obviously I just got unlucky in the second race with the incident at Turn 1; it can happen any time but, whenever everything is going a bit uphill, it seems to happen to us!

“Apart from that I did my absolute best, caught up as much as possible without crashing and went forward in both races. We struggled a bit for out-and-out pace here so we tried to set our bike up for 16 laps, as it’s a bit of a peculiar track for tyre life.”

The race results had followed an impressive Row 2 qualifying performance, despite having to fight through Superpole 1 for the third time this season.

“It’s been a tough weekend but I feel like I’m starting to learn how to ride in this heat a lot better and, without the Race 2 incident at the start, there was the potential to battle for fourth place,” he begins to sum up. “I’m looking forward to a few weeks off before we have the last three rounds of the year and I’m hoping for a really strong finish, as I’m really starting to build-back some confidence and belief in myself now.”

Although Alex now has six weekends with no racing, the Lowes family will continue to be busy as - prior to WorldSBK in Jerez - brother Sam will be competing in the Moto2 World Championship events of Indianapolis, Brno, Silverstone and Misano.