Ben Young kicked off the second round of the Bridgestone Canadian Superbike Championship on the top of the timesheets, setting the early pace in Friday morning practice at the Grand Bend Motorplex, presented by Southwest Marine & Powersports.
The first stint of FP1 was led by Sam Guerin, who immediately dipped into the low 1:04’s despite cool and overcast conditions following early morning rain. The EFC Group BMW rider was nearly a half-second clear of the field by the 10-minute mark of the 40-minute session, looking determined to earn his first career BS Battery Pole Position this afternoon.
However, Young would return to his familiar position at the front just prior to the midway point, posting a time of 1:04.199 to go a quarter-second clear of Guerin with fellow rival Jordan Szoke third.
There wasn’t much to separate the field with 10 minutes to go, as just a quarter-second covered the top-four and roughly 0.75 seconds across the top seven riders in the GP Bikes Pro Superbike class.
Young would proceed to stretch that advantage in the final stint, improving his best time to an impressive 1:03.462, but that late flyer came just moments before the Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW rider crashed in turn one to end his session.
He was thankfully uninjured and managed to guide the M1000RR back to pit lane, where he seemed to indicate to his team that a mechanical issue may have caused the crash.
Regardless, Young’s only concern will be sorting out any potential technical difficulties before afternoon qualifying, as he topped FP1 by 0.762 seconds and continues to look like the runaway favourite of the weekend.
The battle behind him continues to shape up to be a good one, however, as his friend and former Daytona teammate Trevor Daley returned to the CSBK paddock in excellent form to go second-fastest in FP1.
The OneSpeed Suzuki rider could not make round one but showed zero signs of rust in his return, moving to second in the final moments with a time of 1:04.224. The morning proved to be very productive overall for Daley, who also topped the timesheets in the Pro Sport Bike practice session in his return.
Completing the top-three in FP1 was Szoke, who put his CKM Kawasaki only 0.195 seconds behind Daley and just 0.033 seconds clear of Guerin. The latter could not improve upon his excellent early pace, but still managed a respectable start to the weekend aboard his EFC Group BMW.
The biggest news of the morning was the absence of Trevor Dion, who is expected to miss the weekend and perhaps longer as he recovers from arm pump, an ailment the Economy Lube Ducati rider has dealt with since round one at Shannonville.
The feature class will now hope for better conditions when they return to the track for BS Battery qualifying this afternoon, with Q1 scheduled for 2:10 pm ET before the top-ten advance to Q2 at roughly 2:45 pm ET.
Full results from the morning sessions can be found on the series’ official website at CSBK.ca.
