MotoAmerica

A day after a gearbox issue knocked him out of 14th place with just two laps to go in race one at Magny-Cours in France, Jake Gagne turned in his best World Superbike performance to date when he finished 12th in trying conditions during race two on the Red Bull Honda as a fill-in rider for the injured Stefan Bradl.

  That was a great time. Thank you @hondawsbk and Magny-Cours for raining down knowledge and lessons all wknd. First time in France was challenging and very memorable. Merci! @worldsbk A post shared by jake gagne (@jakegagne) on Oct 2, 2017 at 3:36am PDT

"The big thing for me today is that, unlike MotoAmerica, the flag-to-flag rule means that even if it’s spitting rain, you can still race on slick tires," Gagne said in a team release. "This for me was a completely new scenario, so it took me a while to figure out how much I could push in these conditions. Towards the end, I started going faster and faster and I even set my personal fastest time of the whole weekend on the very last lap. Twelfth place is not bad, but I feel I had the potential to do much better today. I’m happy with what I’ve learned and that I was able to improve outing after outing and race after race. I want to thank the whole team because it’s been another amazing experience and I had a lot of fun."

Gagne raced a Broaster Genuine Chicken Honda in the 2017 MotoAmerica Series. The Californian also raced for the Red Bull Honda team at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in July.