SAM LOWES: MOTO2 MAESTRO
Speaking from experience, growing up in Lincolnshire leaves you with three career choices: cattle farmer, tractor driver or motorcycle racer. The county’s disproportionately rife with all three, but among the shire’s many great two-wheelers that’ve ruled on the roads and the tracks over more decades than you can count on a hand – even with the extra fingers – is a certain Sam Lowes.
If you’re into your bike racing, neither Sam or his twin brother Alex – Pata Yamaha WSB rider – should be unfamiliar names, having both grafted their way to the top as organically as it comes. They didn’t come from money, they weren’t spoon-fed caviar and they certainly haven’t had it easy. What they did have was a burning ambition to be the best, the unrelenting support of a close-knit family, plus a bright red Citroën C1 to terrorise the neighbourhood. Sexy it wasn’t, but it did the job and powered the twins throughout their humbling ascension, which was often more stymied than a game of snakes and ladders with half the rungs missing – the highs were enormous and the lows were, well, proper low… and plentiful. Smashed bikes, consumed budgets, the threat of losing rides – they faced it all but they never lost faith.
Despite being identical, the twins cut their own paths and faced their own
