Mistakes costly, but Sam Lowes picks up two Moto2 World Championship points in Austria

Sam Lowes picked up two valuable points as he finished 14th as the Moto2 World Championship resumed at Austria’s Red Bull Ring.

His Elf Marc VDS teammate teammate Augusto Fernandez finished third.

After heavy early morning rain, the 4.3-km Red Bull Ring track had dried substantially before the Moto2 race got underway, meaning all riders started the 25 laps on slick tyres.

Wet patches remained, however, meaning Fernandez and Lowes had to take care in the early laps.

Starting from seventh on the grid, Lincoln's Lowes showed plenty of aggression on the first lap to sit sixth. By lap seven, he was fourth and closing in on the three-rider fight for third.

But the 30-year-old started struggling around mid-race and dropped to sixth.

Luck then deserted Lowes on several occasions. First, he was pushed wide at the start of lap 15 by another rider, which dropped him to 10th. A mistake on the last lap when chasing eighth saw him lose five further places.

The result sees Lowes remain fourth in the world championship with 101 points to his name, 96 behind leader Remy Gardner.

“I really struggled in the second half and didn’t expect that,” Lowes said.

“The conditions were hard. The first part of the race was OK. But I started to struggle a lot with a vibration that I haven’t had all weekend. I dropped back a lot with a few mistakes.

"I managed to feel better in the last few laps, got into P9 then I tried to get into P8 on the last lap to salvage some good points but ran a bit wide.

"Obviously off line was damp so when I came back on track I nearly crashed and lost a lot of positions.

"In the end two points is better than zero, but I really struggled in the second half and didn’t expect that. It’s something completely different to how I felt during the rest of the weekend.

"We have to look and understand what it was.

"Apart from that, it’s nice to be back racing again. This is a difficult track for me, and it’s not a nice way to start the second half of the season. But it’s two points and we’ll try and improve next week.”