VOLUME 58 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 14, 2021 P93
And Gagne? Sure, he'd done
an admirable job as teammate to
2020 champ Cameron Beaubier,
and finished runner-up in the 2020
championship, but in four previous
seasons of MotoAmerica Super-
bike racing, Gagne had exactly
zero wins to his credit.
Some pegged him as champion
in waiting for 2021 for sure, but
there were a lot of question marks
to whether Gagne could shoulder
the pressure of be-
ing the lead rider on
the most powerful
team in the Mo-
toAmerica paddock.
While there may have been
doubters, Gagne wasn't one of
them. Neither was Attack Perfor-
mance owner Richard Stanboli.
Gagne and Stanboli were both
confident going into the season
that the No. 32 was the rider to
beat. Did they have any inkling that
Gagne would take the series by
storm, that he would not only set
the MotoAmerica/AMA Superbike
record for the most wins in a single
Life is good for Jake Gagne. The 28-year-old is
settling into his new house in Durango, Colorado, he's getting some
old injuries fixed that have prevented him from training as hard has
he'd like and, oh yeah, he's coming off a season where he rewrote
the MotoAmerica/AMA Superbike record books on his Fresh N' Lean
Attack Performance Yamaha R1 en-route to the 2021 MotoAmerica
Superbike Championship.
If you step back for a moment and think about the landscape of Mo-
toAmerica Superbike racing's 2021 pre-season, many prognosticators
were predicting the arrival of Frenchman Loris Baz coming to America,
on the Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati, as a game changer. After all,
Baz came to MotoAmerica with an impressive resume—a two-time race
winner in World Superbike and three full seasons of MotoGP under his
belt. He was signing with a proven squad who, in 2020, helped give
Ducati its first MotoAmerica/AMA Superbike victory in 10 years.
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
BRIAN J NELSON & JAKE GAGNE
JAKE GAGNE
AND ATTACK
PERFORMANCE
REWROTE
THE RECORD
BOOKS FOR
MOTOAMERICA
IN 2021. IT
WAS TRULY A
STUNNING SEASON
