Dumas takes pole, Young clinches Superbike championship in qualifying at Shannonville
Shannonville, ON – The Canada Cup will officially be staying put in 2024, as Ben Young mathematically clinched his fourth career Bridgestone CSBK title on Friday despite rival Alex Dumas taking pole position at Shannonville Motorsport Park.
Young entered the season finale with a 50-point lead and the tie-breaker over Sam Guerin, allowing him to secure the GP Bikes Pro Superbike championship off qualifying points as long as he put himself higher on the grid than Guerin.
He would do just that, but hardly without drama in what was one of the wildest qualifying days in recent memory for the feature class.
While leading Q1, Young stalled on the front straight and was forced to push his Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW into the pits, ending his session as the team scrambled to figure out the issue.
After reportedly discovering a battery problem, the team decided not to risk anything in Q2 as Young hopped aboard his secondary “B bike” for the top-ten BS Battery shootout, which featured a rain setup in the event the weather changed.
That initially allowed Guerin a chance to push the title fight onto Saturday, as he took the early lead in Q2 with a time of 1:44.461 aboard his EFC Group BMW with Dumas chasing in second and Young third.
Dumas would then leapfrog Guerin to jump to the top of the timesheets just prior to the halfway point in Q2, blitzing his way into the 1:43 range just moments before Young squeezed past Guerin and into second.
As if there couldn’t be more drama, Guerin then discovered a brief setup issue when leaving the pit lane with five minutes to go, preventing him from getting a tow off Dumas.
When he finally returned to the track on his own, the Quebec City native could only marginally improve upon his time, settling for third on the grid and seeing his title chances officially come to a close.
Young would improve his own time for good measure, and while it wasn’t enough to dislodge Dumas for BS Battery Pole Position, it did reward him with an additional three points and thus a third consecutive Canada Cup.
“We always seem to have some sort of problems don’t we,” Young joked, after battling qualifying issues during his 2019 and 2023 title weekends. “It’s been an up and down year, so to get out of it with a fourth championship is awesome. Hopefully we can have some fun this weekend and still put it on the top of the box, but in the meantime we’re definitely going to celebrate a bit tonight!”
The celebrations overshadowed what was a historic day for Dumas and the Economy Lube Ducati team, as he snatched his sixth career BS Battery Pole award but his first since taking over the V4 Panigale earlier this season.
That gives the Italian brand their first Pro Superbike pole position ever in the timed qualifying era, ending a run of five consecutive BMW poles in 2024.
“The bike is amazing, but Scott Miller did a ton of work overnight and we made a huge jump from yesterday to today,” Dumas said. “It feels good to be back on pole. Congrats to Ben on the championship, but hopefully now we can have some good battles this weekend.”
Guerin will complete the front row in third, and while his quest for a first career championship will have to wait, his work isn’t done as the EFC Group BMW rider tries to hang onto second in the standings over Jordan Szoke.
Szoke would qualify fourth for CKM Kawasaki and trails Guerin by 29 points heading into the weekend, though he will have his work cut out for him as he qualified 0.750 seconds behind the current championship runner-up.
Centering the second row will be Shannonville’s regional champion Eli Daccache, who continues to show well for Milwaukee Yamaha as he ran in fourth for the first half of Q2 and ultimately wound up just 0.099 seconds behind Szoke.
Taking sixth on the grid and the final spot on the second row was Sebastien Tremblay, who put in an incredible effort aboard his Sport Bike title-winning Turcotte Performance GSX-R750.
It remains to be seen if Tremblay will do double-duty this weekend after already clinching his championship in CTMP, though he certainly looked competitive enough despite piloting a lesser-powered middleweight-spec machine.
Leading off the third row is Paul Macdonell, who has looked very strong on Friday aboard his PMR/Vass Performance BMW. The Alberta native put himself marginally ahead of David MacKay, who will try to continue reeling off top-five finishes for ODH Snow City Cycle Honda.
Completing the third row in a valiant effort is Trevor Daley, who fought through a wrist injury and his lesser-powered OneSpeed Suzuki GSX-R750 to take ninth.
Daley crashed his GSX-R1000 Superbike earlier in FP1 and was forced to resort to his Sport Bike-spec machine, though he managed to turn in an impressive effort even at less than full health.
Rounding out the top ten in Q2 was Tomas Casas, who couldn’t replicate his stronger pace from Q1 and was forced to settle for the start of row four aboard his Yamaha Motors Canada machine.
Now with the championship tucked away for 2024, Young and company will return to the track for race one on Saturday with the freedom to fight as intensely as they like, as Dumas tries to convert pole into a second win of the campaign for the Ducati squad.
Full results can be found on the series’ official website.
