Image: Supplied.

Australia’s Remy Gardner was able to notch a top-eight result in Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK) race two at Magny-Cours, however, a mistake in qualifying on Saturday left him on the back foot in each of the races.

Gardner suffered an early crash in superpole and after rejoining he was unable to climb any higher than P15 on the grid ahead of race one, and he ultimately took the chequered flag in that position in the opening outing.

On Sunday in France, Gardner finished 11th in the superpole race, meaning he again had to start from the fifth row of the grid for the final encounter of the weekend.

The number 87 made a good start before the red flag, and restarting from 12th, he delivered a consistent pace to stay inside the top 10, making two last lap moves to ultimately secure P8 eight.

“It was a tough weekend, but we kept progressing and I can go home knowing I made a good comeback in the final feature race,” said Gardner. “Unfortunately, yesterday I made a mistake in the qualifying and I had to start from far back, but we managed to build pace and confidence from Saturday. I think we had the speed but starting from 16th didn’t help at all.

“Anyway, we scored valuable points and gained positions and experience for the future, that will be helpful for the remaining rounds. I’d like to thank the team for their work all weekend, and Yamaha for their support.”

Gardner’s next outing in the 2023 Superbike World Championship comes at Aragon later this month, the 10th stop on this year’s calendar set to be contested between 22-24 September.