The first dry running at round five of the Bridgestone Canadian Superbike Championship produced a thrilling FP2 session on Saturday morning, as Ben Young led a razor-thin practice at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
The session had four different leaders at various points with as many as seven different riders taking turns inside the top-three, as times changed dramatically throughout the 30-minute window.
While temperatures were slightly cooler than usual, the sunny weather was a stark contrast to the full day of wet action on Friday, which was welcome news to Young after he crashed in Q2 and left himself ninth on the grid for the weekend’s races.
The drama continued into the first half of FP2 for the Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW squad, however, as Young battled numerous issues with the rear of his M1000RR, leaving him as low as sixth at the midway point.
The team seemingly got it sorted around the 17-minute mark and that’s when the championship leader immediately returned to form, jumping to the top of the timesheets and staying within the top-two the rest of the way.
He would dislodge Jordan Szoke from the provisional top spot but later had to duel with Alex Dumas, who jumped briefly into P1 before Young reclaimed it on his next lap. Young would better that time once more in the final moments, ending with a best time of 1:22.102 as the clock hit zero.
Dumas would make marginal improvements in his final two laps but not enough to lead morning practice for the second day in a row, winding up only 0.236 seconds off the pace aboard his Economy Lube Ducati.
Szoke would settle for a strong third, just 0.301 seconds behind Young but equally as fast over his long stints, as Szoke lapped consistently in the 1:22 range for the CKM Kawasaki team.
Pole-sitter Sam Guerin would end the morning fourth-fastest, leading FP2 early on before parking his EFC Group BMW for the middle portion. Guerin hardly looked concerned with his position in the morning practice, though his late improvements weren’t enough to jump into the top-three.
Trevor Daley rounded out the top-five for OneSpeed Suzuki, continuing his stellar pace across both feature classes as Daley prepares to start from pole in this afternoon’s Economy Lube Pro Sport Bike race.
Tomas Casas would take sixth in FP2 for Yamaha Motors Canada, just marginally ahead of David MacKay (ODH Snow City Cycle Honda) and Torin Collins (Economy Lube/CKM Kawasaki) in what was an extremely competitive top-eight, a group that was covered by less than a second for most of the session.
The 30-rider field will now await the first half of their doubleheader scheduled for later Saturday afternoon at CTMP, just an hour east of Toronto, currently scheduled for 3 pm ET.
