The fourth and final round of the 2022 Canadian Superbike Championship Season lived up to all the hype this weekend, with seven national champions crowned and a few in surprising circumstances, with a number of records being broke in the process.
Below are just a few of the key numbers from a thrilling finale at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
The rank Ben Young climbed to in a number of categories this weekend, en route to clinching his second Pro Superbike title. That makes him one of just eight double-champions in CSBK history, while he also captured his tenth career victory, tenth career pole position, and added three more podiums to bring him to 37, all of which rank firmly in the top-eight already for the new #1.
The amount that BMW brought home in the Pro Superbike class alone this season, as they continued their dominance of the “modern era” in CSBK. Young wrapped up his second career Canada Cup for the Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW squad and also took home Team of the Year honours, while Anthony Bergeron won the Brooklin Cycle Racing Pro Rookie of the Year award. Both riders, along with Sam Guerin and others, helped seal a first Constructors Championship for BMW as well this weekend.
The current record BMW holds after another excellent weekend at CTMP. While they made headlines with their 125th Superbike podium on Sunday, an even more impressive tally is the 85-race run the Motorrad program finds them on; for reference, Suzuki currently holds the next-longest streak at 19 races. In fact, BMW has only missed the podium once since homologation in 2010 – their very first race in ICAR.
The new mantle Trevor Dion will hold after capturing the Liqui Moly Pro Sport Bike championship. Dion made things far more exciting than he may have wanted to, but the LDS Consultants rider did enough to become the first ever Rookie champion in the Sport Bike class, and the third-youngest title winner ever (20 years old) behind only Tomas Casas (18) and Jodi Christie (19).
The record the Liqui Moly Pro Sport Bike field extended on Saturday after Matt Simpson took a shocking debut victory in race one. Only once before had even three riders captured their first Pro win in the same season (Riedmann, Archambault, Daley in 2014), but the 2022 season has given five names their first taste of victory – Simpson, Dion, David MacKay, Jake LeClair, and Elliot Vieira.
The amount the lead changed atop the AIM Insurance Amateur Superbike class. John Fraser held a 12-point lead over rival Julien Lafortune heading into the weekend, but found every ounce of bad luck he could at CTMP, with a heartbreaking mechanical failure on Sunday ending any chance of a championship. To his credit, Lafortune would win both races in dominant fashion, going from a 12-point deficit to an eventual 21-point championship victory in the end.
The history made by teenager Bryce DeBoer this weekend. The first-year national rider scored a pair of second-place finishes to clinch the Super Sonic Race School Lightweight title, missing the podium only twice this season, but he also did enough to secure a Lightweight Pro/Am championship in the Amateur division, becoming the first rider to ever win two Lightweight titles in the same season.
The total number of times a lap record was broken this weekend. In the end, the final number will change six times in three classes, with both qualifying and race records set in Pro Superbike, Super Sonic Race School Lightweight, and Lightweight Pro/Am. The Lightweight riders flashed the most pace, however, as they broke the outright record on Friday before lowering it four more times throughout the weekend, bringing the final tally of “new” lap records to eleven.