The Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team has completed the first day of action for the eighth round of the 2017 FIM Superbike World Championship, which is currently underway at the Laguna Seca raceway in California. Stefan Bradl and new recruit for the American event, Jake Gagne, were 14th and 17th respectively in the combined times of today’s two free practice sessions and will therefore start tomorrow’s qualifying from Superpole 1.

Bradl got an OK start to the round by completing the first session in ninth place on board his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP2 machine. In the early minutes of FP2, however, the 27-year-old German tucked the front-end of the bike entering the Corkscrew; he then slid onto the gravel side by side with his motorcycle and ended up back onto the track. After the crash, red flags were deployed and not long after the restart – given the limited damage taken by the bike – Stefan was able to return to the track. Bradl could not improve on his morning’s lap-time and therefore ended the day in 14th place.

Bradl’s team mate for the US Round, Jake Gagne, made his much-anticipated World Superbike debut and used the majority of the track time getting to grips with the WorldSBK-spec version of the Fireblade as well as the Pirelli tyres. The 23-year-old American steadily improved lap after lap throughout the two sessions but he also ended up crashing unhurt – in the final minutes of the Free practice 2 – at the Corkscrew, with the dynamic of the accident that it was almost identical to the one occurred to his team mate earlier on.

Stefan Bradl 6 - 14th

It was obviously not an easy day at the office. This morning we started off pretty well: I really love this place and enjoy riding around here for the first time after a few years! We did OK in FP1 but we were having some issues on corner entry and eventually we found out what we needed to do. We made some changes for the afternoon session but I wasn’t having the same feeling with the bike as before, so we tried to do some more tweaks. Tomorrow morning we will start back with the FP1 configuration and let’s see what the progress will be tomorrow. This afternoon’s crash was just a small one and didn’t really cost us any track-time, because there was very little damage to the bike. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow!



Jake Gagne 45 - 17th

It was a good day! There was a lot to learn and a lot of things to figure out with tyres, electronics, suspensions and so on. Everything was kind of new to me, but we made some progress outing after outing. Unfortunately I had a small crash towards the end of FP2 but I was pushing trying to find the limit and the feeling for the front tyre. Again, I’m happy: the team is great and super supportive and they are all trying to help me move forward. So the goal stays the same, we will trying to make some more progress and see where we end up.

Pieter Breddels

Stefan had a solid start to the day and he was in the top-10 after the first free practice. We were forced to make some changes though after the session and the feeling this afternoon was not there anymore and therefore he could not improve his lap-time. Tomorrow we will go back to the same package of the morning and we should be able to make a step forward. Jake did a good job today. There were so many things that were new to him so he had to basically get to grips with the whole package first. We did work on the riding position especially at the front-end because he wasn’t perfectly comfortable with it. We helped him out with our knowledge of the track and the bike and he was able to build speed upon speed and the lap-times were improving. Unfortunately just at the last outing of FP2 he had a small crash, but it was his first time with a harder front-tyre and he wasn’t used to it. Overall it was a challenging day so let’s see what tomorrow brings.