The Canadian Superbike championship will end its 2023 campaign at Shannonville this weekend, with a very tight battle for the premiere title.
Going into the weekend, the schedule shows a triple-header in Pro Superbike, with races Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That means the scrap between series leader Alex Dumas, with his three-point lead on second-place Ben Young, could easily flip. Even third-place Sam Guerin hasn’t been mathematically eliminated from the championship, but as he is 43 points out of the lead, it seems unlikely that Guerin would prevail, unless Dumas and Young were both DNF or DNS.
There are other interesting battles shaping up over the weekend. In Pro Superbike, Trevor Dion has left the Waznie Racing team (Jordan Szoke’s squad) and instead he is riding in Pro Sport Bike aboard his 600 (he took the title in that series last year). Connor Campbell will instead leave Pro Sport Bike to jump on board with Waznie Racing.
It’s a big move for Campbell, who started years ago in CSBK’s Amateur Lightweight Sport Bike class. He has put the work in to move up from the 400 series to the 600 amateur series, then gone pro, and now he’d saddling up with Szoke’s superbike squad. Just the kind of results that CSBK organizers hoped for years ago, when they started the 400 series.
Down in the supersport pro series, the spread between first-place David Mackay and second-place Matt Simpson is 16 points. With only two races in this series, there’s a bit less opportunity for a shift in the overall lead, but with Dion racing his 600 again, we do expect excitement.
We also see former 600 series winner Tomas Casas planning to race the new Yamaha R7 machine in the Twins category, which runs on-track at the same time as the 600s. If a few more riders put in an effort in this twin-cylinder series, we could see the Pro Sport Bike races being an even better draw—they’re already arguably the best racing in CSBK.
This weekend’s Shannonville race will run in the track’s “long” configuration. Tickets for general admission are $40, and there are no “Sunday-only” options—see more details here.
