CSBK By the Numbers: Round 6 at Shannonville Motorsport Park

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Category: CSBK News

Published on Thursday, September 5, 2024 08:59 EDT

Written by Cam Bickle

Another season has come to a close in the Bridgestone Canadian Superbike Championship, with ten national champions crowned and a number of records broken across the 2024 campaign.

Below are just some of the key numbers from the Shannonville finale.

Young enters CSBK royalty with fourth Canada Cup

Ben Young had a strong case to be on the “Mount Rushmore” of GP Bikes Pro Superbike riders before this season even began, but his latest championship all but seals his spot in history.

Young avoided any weekend drama and wrapped up his fourth Canada Cup in qualifying on Friday, moving him out of a tie with three-time winner Michel Mercier and making him just the third ever four-time champion in feature class history, joining 14-time champion Jordan Szoke and six-time winner Steve Crevier.

It also put him alongside those two names as the only rider to win three successive championships, having followed up his 2019 title with a period of dominance in 2022, 2023, and now 2024.

That’s just the latest notch on the resumé in what has been another remarkable year for Young, who exits the season with the third-most victories (21), second-most podiums (57), and third-most pole positions (17) in Superbike history, despite not even cracking the top ten in career race starts during his eight seasons in CSBK.

The Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW rider has hinted that he won’t be around to chase Szoke’s records, but regardless of where Young finds himself in the future, it’s clear his spot amongst Canada’s racing legends is safe.

Dumas continues Ducati supremacy

Ducati admittedly doesn’t have a rich history north of the border, as Pascal Picotte’s lone CSBK season with Fast by Ferraci in 1993 accounts for almost their entire success in the record books. 

That’s all changing quickly though with Alex Dumas at the helm.

The 2021 champion has looked stronger than ever aboard the V4 Panigale, and his Shannonville efforts have started to cement that. A start-to-finish victory in race one was his second since joining the Economy Lube program, putting him alongside Picotte as the only repeat winner for Ducati and just three victories behind his total.

His second-place finish in race two was more historic, though, giving him a seventh podium in eight races since joining the Italian brand and thus passing Picotte for the most ever by a Ducati rider in Canada. 

For his own resumé, Dumas also notched his 31st career podium to tie Kevin Lacombe for the sixth most in Superbike history, extending his incredible hit rate of 31 podiums in just 34 career CSBK races (91.2%).

Aprilia breaks new ground in Twins class

The duo of Dallas Reynolds and J.P. Tache have been incredible for Aprilia in 2024, with Reynolds becoming their first ever national champion at Shannonville after rattling off eleven podiums in 12 races while Tache took six victories across the campaign.

But adding one more name to the mix at the SMP finale helped secure a little more history, as Jean-Francois Cyr joined the duo to record Aprilia’s first ever CSBK podium lockout on Saturday.

The trio repeated their 1-2-3 finish on Sunday to add another one for good measure, and they were joined in the celebrations by amateur champion Sebastian Silva and race winner Julia Krans, cementing the RS 660 as the package to beat within the Importations Thibault Pro-AM Twins class.

Lap record haul reaches new heights in 2024

The Bridgestone era has enjoyed a massively successful start, offering increased durability and consistency across its first two years as the spec-tire of CSBK.

However, the one-lap performance of the BATTLAX tires is hardly lacking either, evidenced by an incredible 31 lap records in 2024.

Each class saw a lap record get broken this season, with the most coming in round four at RAD Torque Raceway when nine out of ten classes shattered the previous marks from 2015.

The Super Sonic Road Race School Pro-AM Lightweight class saw the most turnover this season, with all but one lap record being broken in the amateur split while three new records were also set in the pro division.

This comes after 20 lap records were set across four rounds in 2023, bringing the haul to 51 lap records in the first ten rounds of the Bridgestone CSBK partnership.