Superbike Preview: Young reignites rivalry with Dumas in Edmonton
Edmonton, AB – A change in venues couldn’t prevent Ben Young from snatching pole position on Friday, as he captured his third consecutive BS Battery Pole award in a scorching qualifying session at RAD Torque Raceway.
Visiting the Edmonton circuit for the first time in his career, Young immediately moved to the top of Q1 behind a time of 1:17.947 and exited with a comfortable advantage, securing his entry to the top-ten Q2 session.
Torin Collins and Jordan Szoke would gradually chip away at the Q1 deficit, but it would be inconsequential as all three lapped safely inside the top-ten. However, the same was not true for Alex Dumas, who set a new lap record earlier in the day in FP1.
Having completed just one flying lap, Dumas went straight off at turn seven with a rear brake issue and sat parked for the remainder of Q1, tumbling down the order and clinging to a Q2 spot with a time of 1:20.642.
Ultimately, Dumas would narrowly squeeze through in eighth and allow the Economy Lube Ducati team to make the necessary repairs prior to Q2, setting up a showdown between himself, Young, Collins, and Szoke for pole.
There was little to separate the quartet early in the final session, as Young paced the field from Collins, Szoke, and Dumas with less than a half-second covering them all.
However, Young would blitz the timesheets around the midway point of Q2, lowering Dumas’ lap record time from the morning with a new best of 1:17.374, almost a half-second clear of the previous lap record from 2015.
That seemed like an insurmountable gap, but Collins would put in a late time attack to inch closer to what would have been a historic pole position, putting his Novalda Kawasaki within 0.137 seconds of Young but eventually settling for second.
That preserved a third consecutive pole for Young and the Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW squad and the 16th of his Superbike career, putting him at the front for both feature class races this weekend.
Dumas would salvage a dramatic third and the final spot on the front row, climbing to within 0.132 seconds of Collins as only 0.269 seconds blanketed the lead trio.
Szoke would lose a bit of steam in the final stints of Q2 but managed to put himself a strong fourth on the grid and at the front of row two, less than a second from pole.
Centering the second row will be round two breakout winner Sam Guérin, who closed the gap to the front over his two qualifying sessions but would still wind up fifth, only marginally behind Szoke aboard his EFC Group BMW.
David MacKay found over a full second of improvement in Q2 to place his ODH Snow City Cycle Honda into sixth and the end of row two, while fellow Honda rider Brian Worsdall will kick off row three in seventh, headlining the local contingent for the Mots Machining team.
Fellow EMRA star Tosh Gable will sit alongside him in eighth, while Sebastien Tremblay put his Turcotte Performance Suzuki just ahead of Paul Macdonell and the PMR/Vass Performance BMW team in the final places of the top-ten.
Young’s qualifying effort will extend his advantage in the BS Battery Pole Position Award standings, where he opens up a 16-point lead over Szoke and Guerin with only three rounds and 30 points left up for grabs.
Full results from Friday’s qualifying can be found on the series’ official website.
