Page 43 - GRID4

JAKE GAGNE | MOTUL SUPERBIKE
Gagne didn’t get to spend as much time on the track dialing in his bike set up as he would’ve liked throughout Friday’s practice sessions, but he still managed to set
a fast enough time to advance into Superpole. The San Diego native ended up clocking the eleventh fastest time with a 2:16.389, placing him in the middle of the fourth row for the start of the first race. He moved up a couple
of positions off the start as he launched his Genuine Broasters Chicken Honda into the top ten through the first corner, forcing his way in front of Larry Pegram. Gagne found himself chasing down the Westby Racing Yamaha of Mathew Scholtz throughout the early stages of the race, but he wasn’t able to match the pace of the South African as he dropped back a couple of tenths here and a couple of tenths there. The Californian remained composed
for the opening half of the race as he turned consistent laps in a lonely ninth place, but as the second half of the race approached, Danny Eslick began to fall back into
his clutches. He took his time to launch an overtaking maneuver as he knew he had the pace to make the pass, eventually finding a way around the TOBC Racing Yamaha on the eighth lap. At that point, Gagne continued to run
a steady pace and built a decent gap ahead of Eslick as he cemented himself in eighth position where he would finish the race. The team made some changes overnight that greatly improved Gagne’s race pace by almost a full second and it was evident in his riding when the lights went out on Sunday. He launched his CBR1000RR into
the first corner and made some quick moves, promoting himself to seventh position ahead of Eslick and Pegram. The three of them were entangled in a fender-to-fender battle that lasted all the way until the eventual red flag that caused a premature end to the already shortened eight lap affair. Gagne missed out on eighth place by a split second, but the strides that the team made throughout the weekend concerning his comfortability on the motorcycle and his increased race pace will leave him in good spirits as the series heads to Utah Motorsports Campus for the
JAKE GAGNE fifth round of the series.
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JAKE GAGNE