Bright but bitterly cold and blustery conditions but couldn’t stop Britain’s Sam Lowes from continuing his sensational run of form at the Motorland circuit today as preparations began for the Aragon GP.

A 30-minute delay to the exceptionally cold morning’s practice session allowed track temperatures to increase slightly with Lowes fast from the off as the action finally got underway.

Fresh from his stunning victory in Le Mans five days ago, the Lincolnshire-man felt instantly confident aboard his Kalex chassis, taking P1 with just 12 minutes of the session complete before holding fast at the top for the remainder of FP1.

Repeatedly reducing his lap-time while working on race settings, Lowes shaved 0.6s off his personal best throughout the 40-minutes to conclude his morning’s work with a 1’53.391 and control FP1 for the sixth time in the last eight races.

Having already won at Aragon in 2016, the Marc VDS rider’s familiarity and confidence with the Spanish circuit showed no signs of abating, and he needed just four laps of this afternoon’s FP2 to be the first rider of the weekend to break the 1’53 barrier, reducing his morning effort by a further half a second by his 10th lap.

After dominating the majority of the afternoon session, a late crash at turn seven saw the 30-year-old walk away uninjured but unable to continue with the closing stages, ending the day third in the combined standings behind Italian duo Fabio di Giannantonio and Marco Bezzecchi.

“Today we decided to concentrate on our race pace. Last year there was a bit of a drop-off with the rear grip and we are using the same spec this weekend and obviously it is a little bit cooler, so race pace was something very important to work on," said Lowes.

“I felt good and what is particularly pleasing is I managed to lap in the 1’52s with almost a full race distance on the tyres. I couldn’t do that last year, so already I’ve taken a positive step.

“I need to take off a bit more speed going into the corner tomorrow and set-up for the turns a little better, but the team have done a great job and our base set-up worked immediately again at another completely different track to where we’ve been recently.

“Conditions were quite tricky today with the cold and the wind and the crash in FP2 came because I was a bit wide into turn seven. It is not nice to make a mistake but when you know exactly what happened then it is something I can forget and push hard again tomorrow. The goal will be to get on the front row and be ready to fight on Sunday.”