The PTR Honda team, based in the UK, is more used to racing in the Supersport World Championship or the Superstock 1000 FIM Cup but since the Aragon round two of the team's top riders, Sam Lowes and James Ellison, have maintained their sharpness by competing in the revitalized Buildbase Mallory Park Race of the Year.

Missing from the UK race scene since 2008, the Race of the Year is a traditional one-off event at the Midlands race circuit. Since the race's inception in the late 1950s it has seen some famous names take the win, including Surtees, Hailwood, Agostini, Read, Saarinen, Sheene Roberts and many other top riders. In more recent years Walker, Crutchlow and most recently (in 2008) Sykes have added their names to that list, but in hot conditions last Sunday Parkalgar Honda rider Sam Lowes won the famous old trophy for himself by beating his Bogdanka PTR Honda stable mate James Ellison.

The race was stopped and restarted and in the restart Ellison, riding a Superstock Honda Fireblade and not his normal Supersport World Championship 600cc Honda machine, pulled an early lead only for Lowes to close in and pass him, taking a final margin of victory of over two seconds.

Lowes, a podium finisher in WSS already in 2011, said of his Mallory win,

"I have really enjoyed racing at Mallory Park, it has been good fun and I hope the crowd enjoyed the race. I got my head down once I got past James and knew he would push me all the way. The hot temperature meant there was very little grip so the outright lap record was always going to be difficult, but I am glad to take the Supersport lap record and my first win of the season - now it is back to the World Supersport Championship and I want to win there next."

For Ellison, a two time Superstock European Championship in his early career and therefore back on the sort of bike that made him famous, said,

"My Superstock Bogdanka PTR Honda was very quick but it wasn't stopping the way I wanted it to and was pushing wide into the corners. I adjusted my riding and it got better but Sam was riding the wheels off his Parkalgar Honda and I couldn't catch him. It's been a good event, I've enjoyed it and now I have scored my first podium of the year I want to repeat that at Brno in the World Supersport Championship, this is something to build on."


Like their peers in the greater WSBK paddock, Lowes and Ellison will be in action again at Brno, between 8 and 10 July.