Sam Lowes struggled in the final round of the Moto2 championship at Valencia over the weekend after crashing heavily in practice.

Although his spill came in the first free practice on Friday, the Onchan resident was still in severe discomfort come race day.

He lined up for what was the last race of the season in 10th spot, riding with the help of painkillers.

It was only seconds old when the red flags came out following a three-bike collision at turn two.

With oil deposited on the track, it took a lot of time to clear it up and the race was shortened from 25 laps to 16 with the grid lining up in their original qualifying positions.

Lowes held on to 10th position for a couple of laps until Tetsuta Nagashima and Jorge Navarro slipped past him. But he then regained two places back up to 11th behind championship leader Remy Gardner (KTM), who had to finish in the top 13 to claim the title from his team-mate Raul Fernandez who needed to win the race to stand any chance of taking it.

Lowes eventually overtook Gardner on lap five and later disposed of Thom Luthi (SAG Team), Marcel Schrotter (Liqui Moly) and Jorge Navaro, but couldn’t make up ground on Xavi Vierge and would cross the finish line seventh.

The race was won by Raul Fernandez with Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini) second and Lowes’s Elf Marc VDS team-mate Augusto Fernandez third.

Although Raul Fernandez won the race, it wasn’t enough to take the championship from Gardner who finished in 10th position. This left Fernandez four points shy of Gardner’s 311 points total, with early series leader Lowes ending the Moto2 Championship in a solid fourth place.

Gardner becomes only the second intermediate class world champion from Australia since former TT winner Kel Carruthers in 1969 (250cc). Remy’s father, Wayne Gardner, was 500cc champion in 1987.

Sam commented: ’I was really compromised after the crash in FP1 and felt sore all weekend at a track which is my nemesis now. My target will be to come back here and get a good result in the future.

’The team did a great job with the bike, it was working well, I’m really happy to finish the race with a solid performance after injury.’

PETER CALLISTER