Sam Lowes is taking a pragmatic but positive feeling into the Moto2 summer break despite a disappointing Moto2 Dutch TT round at Assen that left him outside the top ten.

The Marc VDS rider had been hoping to take a confidence boost into the six-week hiatus by replicating the form that saw him take a dominant victory at Jerez and a pole position at Le Mans earlier in the season.

It was optimism that was heightened further after qualifying when Lowes qualified on the second row in fifth, but come race day a poor start left him languishing in a position outside the top ten that he couldn’t recover from.

“I probably didn’t expect to fight for the win today but I definitely expected to be stronger than I was,” Lowes, who crossed the line 11th, said. “I struggled from the early laps to stop the bike. 

“I don’t know if it was a temperature increase from Saturday. But it was tough in the braking zones, especially with a full tank of fuel. I also hit a few neutrals, which is frustrating because I didn’t have any over the weekend. But I did see quite a few guys struggling with that, so it wasn’t just me. 

“It’s disappointing but we got to the finish and scored some points. It was a tough race.”

His Assen results notwithstanding, Lowes was nonetheless positive when evaluating the first eight rounds of the 2023 Moto2 season, his ninth in the intermediate class, having reached the summer break holding down eighth place in the overall standings.   

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"We obviously can’t be happy with 11th but in this first half of the year we’ve shown good signs of what we can do. We know we need to improve. I feel ready for the break but I feel good and confident. 

“We’re going to Silverstone next and then we’ll have Misano and Barcelona – tracks that I like – coming up soon, where we can be fighting for good results. 

“When you’re having a bad day and struggling, you know you just have to get something out of the race. Maybe I wouldn’t have done that in the past. 

“Of course, we expected more, the team deserve more and maybe we didn’t quite get it right over the weekend. We both struggled slight more than we normally do. 

“But sometimes it’s like that and we know how good this team is. We’ve been competitive at every other GP. We can look to Silverstone in a good way.”