Young, Vieira find strong pace to begin Daytona 200 weekend

The Bridgestone Canadian Superbike duo of Ben Young and Elliot Vieira got off to a productive start to their Daytona 200 weekend, placing both of their Bridgestone BPM Yamaha’s in the top-30 of the morning practice sessions at Daytona International Speedway. 

The duo was dispersed for the weekend sessions along with the rest of the 53-rider field, with Vieira joining Group B in morning practice and Young slotting into Group A immediately afterwards for his own FP1 session. 

Vieira initially had a challenging start to his first ever appearance at Daytona, sitting outside the top-20 of his 26-rider grouping for the first half of the session, but the talented debutant found his stride by the end of practice as he jumped all the way to fifth in the group with a time of 1:57.868 and not far off leader Alex Arango. 

As for Young, the reigning CSBK champion found himself in the quicker Group A – one which featured the likes of two-time defending Daytona winner Brandon Paasch, Supersport titleholder Josh Herrin, and MotoAmerica legend Josh Hayes, amongst others – but managed to hold his own in the talented grouping. 

Sitting in 17th for majority of the session, Young completed the morning session in 19th with a time of 1:53.119, just under three seconds off overall leader PJ Jacobsen and ahead of notable names like Xavi Fores and Danilo Lewis. 

In the end, Young would stay 19th in the combined times amongst all 53 entries as his grouping made up 23 of the top 25 places, while Vieira finished the morning 30th overall and only two seconds off the top-20. Both are comfortably inside the 110% cut-off heading into qualifying, which projects to be around the 2:00 mark. 

Jacobsen would pace the early portion of the day ahead of Herrin – who had a number of frantic moments in his session – and three-time Daytona winner Danny Eslick in third, with just a half-second covering the top six.  

The BPM Yamaha duo will have just under a three-hour window to improve their setup ahead of the first qualifying sessions on Thursday afternoon, where Young will take to the track first with Group A before Vieira and Group B slot in after. 

The second “Q2” sessions will then determine the provisional 53-rider order on Friday morning, before the overall top-12 advance to the Time Attack shootout on Friday afternoon – a group both Young and Vieira will try to inch towards. 

The other three Canadian representatives in attendance all found themselves in Group B with Vieira, as Darren James finished third in his group and 27th overall, while Alex Coelho went 32nd fastest and Vincent Levillain ended the morning 38th. 

Results from Thursday’s initial qualifying sessions will be posted to the Bridgestone CSBK website later in the day, while live coverage can be found on MotoAmerica Live+.