Sam Lowes’ preparations for the Japanese GP faced a setback on Thursday after the Elf Marc VDS pitbox caught fire in the early evening.

With the usual race against time for back-to back races heightened by the logistics of travelling from Europe to Japan - especially amid the current and repeated threat of Typhoons thrown into the mix - the situation intensified on Thursday when a fire broke through the garage.

Situated between the Suzuki and Aprilia MotoGP teams in the Japanese pitlane, the fire was quickly contained and luckily no staff were injured. The Kalex motorcycles also promptly moved out of harms way, leaving just the pitbox periphery to suffer the consequences.

A statement from the Marc VDS team on Thursday night confirmed:

"After extinguishing the fire in the garage, proper inspections showed that the fire started when some rain water entered the garage, and got onto the floor, where it caused a short cut in a charger. That in turn let off some sparks, which then quickly grew into a fire.

Fortunately, due to the amazing job done by all the paddock people that were there, the circuit security and circuit firemen, damages were thankfully kept to a minimum.

The Elf Marc VDS Team wants to publically thank the work and huge help provided by all our paddock colleagues with a special mention to the Suzuki team who worked with us to clean and rebuild the garage as if it was their own.

With all our team members safe and the garage rebuilt, we are ready to start the JapaneseGP tomorrow."