With a 100% win record in six races over the first two weekends of the Parts Canada Superbike Championship, Jordan Szoke looks like a pretty fair bet to take his fifth-straight double Superbike and Pro Sport Bike titles.
If it happens, it’ll be his first championship with Honda, with five already in the bag for Kawasaki and one for Suzuki.
Szoke had a relatively easy time at this past weekend’s double-header at Calgary’s Race City (although he said later, “It was a tough day, these guys aren’t making things easy for me”), winning the two Superbike races with three and six second margins. They were Szoke’s 31st and 32nd career Canadian Superbike victories (the next best is Steve Crevier with 26) and the wins upped his career Race City victory list to 10.
Combined with his squeaky-close victory over teenager Jodi Christie at the Mirabel ICAR circuit in May, that gives Szoke and his Honda a 54-point lead over BMW’s Francis Martin, with 16-year-old Cody Matechuk of Cochrane, Alberta in third on a Suzuki.
Martin, the 2005 Canadian champion for Suzuki, said, “It was a very good weekend … [but] … I didn’t have anything for Jordan today. The lapped traffic didn’t help me but it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
The BMW Motorrad Canada team continues to improve, with Martin of Sherbrooke, Quebec, taking a third and a second, the team’s first podiums in their first year of racing.
Kevin Lacombe of St-Cesaire, Quebec, who was expected to give Szoke the hardest time this season with his privately-entered Suzuki GSX-R1000, was second on Saturday but crashed out of the Sunday race, putting him in quite a hole with only two double-headers left in the season.
Szoke might better have been referring to the 600 contests, where scrappy teenager Jodi Christie pushed the reigning champion hard, coming in second by less than 2/10s of a second in both races. These two were in their own world, with everyone else far back and out of the picture for the wins. The results pretty much duplicated the ICAR results.
In other racing action at Race City, Raphael Archambault (a graduate of the Honda CBR125 series) took his third-straight Amateur Sport Bike victory, while Ryan Appenrodt of Quesnel, B.C., and Ryan McCormick of St-Lazare, Quebec, shared the CBR125 wins. Rob Busby of Brantford took the Sport Twins class.
Attendance is definitely a problem for the series this year; there were only five entries in the Sport Twins category, 17 in the premier Superbike category, 15 in Pro Sport Bike, and 19 in Amateur Sport Bike. There was, however, a terrific turnout of 28 in the CBR125 learner class (although only 25 started) and of those, nearly half the grid (13) made the long trek from Ontario and Quebec, aided by transportation provided by Honda Canada.
Superbike points after three of seven races:
1. Jordan Szoke, Brantford, Ont., Honda CBR1000RR, 164 points; 2. Francis Martin, Sherbrooke, Que., BMW S1000RR, 110; 3. Cody Matechuk, Cochrane, Alta., Suzuki GSX-R1000, 90; 4. Andrew Nelson, Kars, Ont., BMW S1000RR, 88; 5. TIE, Jodi Christie, Keene, Ont., Honda CBR600RR, and Mike Ferreira, Mississauga, Ont., BMW S1000RR, 83;
7. Kevin Lacombe, St-Cesaire, Que., Suzuki GSX-R1000, 82; 8. Alex Walsh, Uxbridge, Ont., Kawasaki ZX-10R, 79; 9. Steve Crevier, Maple Ridge, B.C., Suzuki GSX-R1000, 46; 10. Dave Stokowski, Calgary, Alta., Kawasaki ZX-10R, 42.
The remaining rounds are Mosport International Raceway July 10-11 and Atlantic Motorsport Park near Shubenacadie, N.S., August 7-8.
Next year Jordan should ride a Yamaha, and then he’ll have the entire (Japanese) set.