Sam Lowes was left to curse his luck after getting just two corners into the Austrian Moto2 race at Spielberg before crashing out in an unfortunate coming together with Darryn Binder.

On a difficult weekend generally for the Marc VDS Racing rider, Lowes lingered outside the top ten for much of practice before a tip-off in qualifying consigned to 14th on the grid.

Coming into the race hoping to mount a comeback that’d get him into the top ten, instead Lowes found himself down and out just moments into the race after getting entangled with Binder coming round Turn 2.

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The hapless South African, who has already suffered two lap one DNFs this year and was involved in an early skirmish with Jake Dixon at Silverstone, hit the deck after tucking the front of his Husqvarna IntactGP machine. 

Coming down into the path of the unsighted Lowes, the Briton had nowhere to go but into Binder directly, sending him spiralling off his Kalex.

Despite the impact, both riders escaped serious injury, although Binder did complain of back pain and will undergo an assessment between now and the next round in Aragon.

“Of course, it’s been a disappointing weekend in general. I actually made a decent start which I can be happy about. But in the first lap another rider crashed and I was unable to avoid that. Hopefully he’s OK because it was quite a nasty crash.

“It’s difficult to take much more than this from the weekend. We’re just going to keep working and now we go to some better tracks for me, like Barcelona. 

“I was unfortunate to be caught up in the incident, but we also need to qualify better so we can get a better track position in the first laps.”

The second time this season Lowes has been taken out on the first lap of a Moto2 race, his failure to score means he has slipped to tenth in the overall standings at this mid-way stage in the season.