The Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team made a steady start to the French WorldSBK round, as Leon Camier and Jake Gagne ended the opening day twelfth and fifteenth fastest respectively on combined times.
Incremental improvements were made by both riders in each practice session today, however their final practice times places them both in tomorrow’s Superpole 1 session for qualifying, where the top two riders graduate to Superpole 2.
Camier’s best time of 1’38.307 left him 1.105 seconds off the day’s benchmark time, while Gagne’s 1’39.008 saw him 1.806 seconds adrift. Both riders set their best times in the afternoon’s Free Practice 3 session.
Although lacking some pace over a single lap, both Camier and Gagne were able to show more competitive pace on used tyres, hinting that gains can be made in tomorrow’s 21 lap race.
The next #FrenchWorldSBK session is FP4 at 0845 local time (GMT +2) tomorrow before the Superpole sessions start from 1030. Race 1 gets underway at 1300 local time.
Leon Camier 2
It took us a while to get going today, we had a steady start then in the last session we made a setting change which was a move in the right direction and I felt better on the bike. We still need to find a chunk of lap time to challenge the guys ahead of us, but we have a good direction to move in now. This is a circuit where maintaining a quick pace is difficult, but we’ll continue grafting and hopefully can improve for Superpole and the race.
Jake Gagne 45
Today was OK, it was good that I have previous experience at Magny-Cours as it’s a real tricky track to get right. We were able to improve my pace throughout the day, but perhaps not as much as we would’ve liked. The pace on the used tyres was pretty good, but we just need to find a bit more pace tomorrow. I’ll sleep on what we’ve learned on tonight and will aim to make more progress tomorrow and move up the order.
Kervin Bos
Team Manager
After the first day at Magny-Cours we’re a bit down the order, but setting wise we made progress over the course of the day. We can lap quite consistently on used tyres, but we’re still not getting the best performance when the tyres are new, which hurt us today. However, for the race I think we can be better than our current position indicates. Leon feels his setting with the bike is good, we just need to find some tenths so he can challenge the riders ahead of him, while Jake was able to improve his pace throughout the whole day and is moving in the right direction. For FP4 we’ll try some adjustments to give the guys a better bike ahead of qualifying and Race 1.
