The full group for the final BS Battery Qualifying session of the year is set, as Zoltan Frast paced a dramatic Q1 on Friday to book his spot in Q2 later this afternoon at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
The 20-minute session saw 16 different riders vying for the final five spots in Q2, after the usual frontrunners of Ben Young, Sam Guerin, Alex Dumas, Jordan Szoke, and David MacKay punched their tickets with an automatic entry on Friday morning.
That group didn’t leave anything on track, either, with seven lead changes in the first ten minutes while four different riders took turns at the front. Frast would lead on three separate instances before Sebastien Tremblay took the top spot in the final eight minutes, holding steady until the final stint.
Both Tremblay and Frast looked safe with a quarter-second gap to third, but that same margin covered the next four riders in what was a dramatic battle for the final places in Q2.
That battle would get even more complicated when Frast returned to the circuit with teammate Sebastian Hothaza in tow, setting his fastest lap of the session to jump back into first for the final time and in the process dragging Hothaza into third.
Hothaza would be shunted back to fourth after a late improvement from Alex Michel, but the damage was done as it knocked Tomas Casas out of the top five just moments after he sat in a comfortable third.
Frast will bring his Clare’s Cycle BMW into Q2 with plenty of momentum after setting a time of 1:23.720, nearly matching MacKay’s pace from this morning, while Tremblay ended up only 0.175 seconds slower on his Supersport-spec S.T. Motosport Suzuki.
Michel’s strong Superbike debut continued for the B&T McFarlane Kawasaki team, filling in for the injured Connor Campbell and entering Q2 for the first time in his career with a best lap of 1:24.188, less than a half-second behind Frast.
Hothaza would put in a great late effort for Ride42 Yamaha, helped by his teammate Frast in front but still an excellent time of his own as he would go only 0.108 seconds slower than Michel.
Barely hanging on to the final birth in Q2 was Mavrick Cyr, the second Supersport-spec rider to advance aboard his Suzuki GSX-R750, though it came at the expense of fellow Suzuki frontrunner Casas – by a mere 0.020 seconds.
Brian Worsdall and Ernest Bernhard would also wind up marginally short of a Q2 appearance, with Worsdall unable to make a last-lap improvement aboard his Hindle/DP Brakes BMW while Bernhard will start a strong 13th for Farnham Lager Yamaha.
Notably absent from the final battle was 17-year-old phenom Phil DeGama-Blanchet, who had battled mechanical issues all day before his session was ultimately cut short in turn five, bowing out halfway through and being forced to settle for 15th on the grid aboard his Mots Machining Honda,
The five riders will now prepare to join a well-rested Young, Guerin, Dumas, Szoke, and MacKay in Q2 later this afternoon, with the fight for the final BS Battery Pole Position award of the season getting underway at 3:40 pm ET.
Full results can be found here.
