When it all came down to the finish, there were no real upsets at Shannonville’s Canadian Superbike finale—in the Pro categories, even the final races of the season went to the champs.
In Pro Superbike, Alex Dumas nearly won the final race of the season on Sunday afternoon, with series champ Ben Young (who’d already clinched his title) in third on lap one after starting on pole. Young got past second-place Sam Guerin eventually, but it took the entire race to get past Dumas—Young saw a chance on the very last lap, and squeaked through, ending the season atop the podium.
As for Dumas, it was his seventh podium of the season as he finished in second, and like Young, he would not commit to plans for next year. Young won the title aboard a BMW S1000 RR, and Dumas jumped back into the series aboard a Ducati Panigale V4 after his earlier successes in previous seasons on a Suzuki. With Sam Guerin also on a BMW, it looks like the German bike is still the one to beat, although perhaps with a full season to race Dumas might have ended up third overall in the standings, not fourth behind Jordan Szoke.
Speaking of Szoke, he also ended the final race of the season in fourth; he might not have won a race this year, but he took his Kawasaki to a top-four performance in every single race this year, showing his racecraft is still good enough to run at the front of the pack on every track.
Fifth in Sunday’s Race 2 was Tomas Casas. Casas also did not race an entire season, only jumping onboard for the events at the end of the summer. You have to wonder what a full season with more funds for the race team would look like for Casas—but that’s true of just about every roadracing team in North America right now.
For a look at the Race 1 results from Shannonville last weekend, see here (the tl/dr is Dumas/Young/Guerin went 1-2-3 respectively). The final season standings are here.
Pro Sport Bike also saw the season champion win the last race, although it was a different scenario. Instead of a last-lap pass, Tremblay won the race from Mavrick Cyr on a penalty—Cyr jumped the start and, realizing he was going to get dinged for time, he piled on the coal, taking the lead on Lap 5. Tremblay fought hard to regain the race lead from Cyr, but at the end, a it was Cyr across the finish line, then Tremblay, then a hard-charging Trevor Daley, all within a half-second of each other. Cyr’s penalty gave the win to Tremblay and second in the race to Daley.
It was a big season for Tremblay, who ended up 67 points ahead of second-place Cyr and 74 points ahead of third-place John Laing. The numbers look like Tremblay was in control most of the year, and indeed he did pull off an authoritative title win, but if you look at the season-ending stats here, you can see there’s a lot of push coming from the rest of the pack. Next year should be very exciting, especially if we see guys like Jodi Christie, Ben Young and Daley appear in the series again.
Oh yes, and in the weekend’s Race 1, Daley was The Man, grabbing the win by cutting through the pack after starting in eighth overall. It was his third this season, with Cyr second, Laing third. Again—we expect even better things from this class in 2025 if all these racers return.
Tremblay had his championship wrapped up before the weekend started, and Young managed to grab enough points by winning Superpole that he didn’t even need to race to clinch his title. But five other series came down to on-track scraps. The most thrilling by far was Laurent Laliberté-Girard grabbing the Amateur Sport Bike title after entering the final race three points down. Even if he goes on to win other titles in his career, no doubt that hard-fought battle will remain a favored memory!
Ryan Beattie clinched the amateur title in the Super Sonic Road Race School Pro-AM Lightweight title with a fourth-place in Race 1.
In the Pro-AM Twins series, Dallas Reynolds wrapped up the Pro championship in Race 1, and Sebastien Silva won the Amateur title in Race 2. In the ZX-4RR Cup, J-P Schroeder won the Amateur title as he finished second overall.
All in all, a very busy weekend that wrapped up a busy season, as CSBK’s first full season under new management, since Colin Fraser sold the series last season! We’ve seen encouraging signs of growth this year; let’s hope that continues into 2025.
For a full look at every series’ championship standings, check out CSBK.ca here.
