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JAKEgagne
races, eventually bringing in fifteen championship points at the end of the weekend. Although the results
weren’t what the team expects to achieve, the continued progress that they made with the bike will place
Gagne in an optimistic mindset heading into the third round of action at VIRginia International Raceway.
Gagne managed to achieve one of his best qualifying sessions of the entire season thus far as he placed his Genuine Broaster Chicken Honda in sixth place on the grid with a 1:24.843 on a second row only separated by nearly one tenth of a second. The Californian struggled off of the starting grid and fell back a couple of positions when the lights went out, coming through the first corner just inside the top ten. Gagne managed to work his way up to eighth position as the field greeted the green flag to signify the first flying lap, placing his focus on the tightly knit group of riders ahead of him. He fought his way for- ward through the pack, taking advantage of other rider’s mistakes, and utilizing his own racing tactics in order to promote himself to sixth spot by the fourth lap. Gagne tucked in behind Kyle Wyman with Mathew Scholtz nipping at his heels, and a couple of laps later he was forced to forfeit the position to the South African. Gagne began to experience mechanical issues with his motorcycle that slowed his pace, forcing him to fall back down the order over the course of the next couple of laps. By the sixteenth lap of the race, he had fallen far from his earlier pace and dropped back to ninth position as he was forced to pull into
the pits due to a malfunction out of his control. He was dead set on redemption in the second race and was able to secure a decent start that placed him in eighth position in the early stages of the race. Gagne fought tooth and nail with Yamalube/Westby Racing Yamaha’s Mathew Scholtz as well as Jake Lewis throughout the opening laps. After the early race mayhem came to a close, he found himself in eighth position for a number of laps in a row, sticking closely behind Scholtz. The two of them turned equally consistent lap times and just past the opening third of the race the Honda rider began to apply the pres- sure. They were both overtaken by Cameron Beaubier, but Gagne jumped on the opportunity and made a pass of his own to take over seventh position. At that point, he did his best to lay down metronomic lap times and build a small gap ahead of Scholtz. He managed to hold onto a small advantage all the way until the finish line, almost seizing an opportunity to pass Roger Hayden for sixth on the final lap, but he was forced to settle for seventh position when the checkered flag was flown.
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