Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team’s Jake Gagne fought his way into the top ten with a spirited Race 2 at the Circuito San Juan Villicum as teammate Leon Camier was forced to retire.

Lining up in twelfth for Race 2, Leon Camier fought to hold his position into the tight first corner as the lights went out in Argentina. Behind, Jake Gagne moved up to twelfth from fourteenth on the grid as he looked to make amends for Saturday’s crash. The fighting was fierce and Camier found himself again forced to run off track, dropping to eighteenth on lap two while Gagne continued to chase the top ten.

Unfortunately, a technical issue saw Leon Camier retire on lap eight. Gagne had meanwhile become embroiled in a battle with Michael van der Mark, the Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team rider holding his own for several laps against the Dutchman before Gagne developed a vibration issue. Gagne’s pace saw him hold tenth place comfortably in the final third of the race, earning his third top ten finish of 2018.

As the final round of the 2018 season looms, Camier remains on 108 championship points as Gagne moves up to 57 points and seventeenth in the championship.

The Losail International Circuit will host the final round of the 2018 FIM Superbike World Championship, with its traditional Friday and Saturday night races meaning the weekend runs from the October 25 to 27.

Jake Gagne 45

We had a good race for sure. We made some nice changes in Warm Up this morning, but it was hard to be sure of them due to the track being weird after the rain. It improved a couple of areas that we wanted to from yesterday. I had a decent start but maybe got shuffled around a little too much, that’s what you get for qualifying back there. Then we got into a good rhythm, unfortunately half way through the race I had a lot of vibration which was a bummer and made it difficult to ride. That second half of the race I just rode around by myself once ninth got away from me. But I’m happy, top ten is the goal and the track was really cool to ride. Now we try and keep the momentum going for Qatar and get another top ten hopefully!

Leon Camier 2

It’s difficult to say what’s going on at the minute, there was an issue and something didn’t feel right from the sighting lap. The team are looking into it to find out exactly what it was. I had two people crash into me on one lap because I had this issue and was going so slow. Then unfortunately I ended up taking Smrz out, there was nothing I could have done about it as I had a problem going into the corner and had no where to go. It was a disaster. For some reason we are struggling to understand what’s going on, we keep trying things with the electronics and the chassis to get it right but nothing is working. We’ll keep scratching our heads and working through it and hopefully turn around something for Qatar.

Kervin Bos -  Team Manager

A challenging day for sure. Jake had a really good race, finishing in the top ten. This was the first time I saw a really confident Jake Gagne, we saw him passing then lose places and fight straight back. I think it is a great race for his confidence in the future. We saw on Friday that there was something a bit special here for him this weekend and he did well. We saw a racing Gagne this weekend. On the other side of the box it was really hard. Unfortunately we had a technical issue and we are investigating what it was that caused Leon to pull in. It wasn’t safe to proceed especially as he was also last. On Leon’s side we need to regroup, take what has happened this weekend and make a new game plan to start with a blank page in Qatar.