Franklyn Dominguez scored a first and second place finish to capture the Pan American Superbike Championship held November 16-17 at the Autodromo Mobil 1 track near Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Dominguez rode to a dominant win in the first leg and then thrilled the assembled with a come from behind ride after a dismal start in Leg 2.
The four-time Dominican Republic national champ, now residing in Montreal, is a regular in the Mopar Pro Superbike class in the Canadian Superbike Championship series, and had his best season to date finishing an eventual seventh. Dominguez was ranked fourth going into the double-header rounds at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, were a DNF derailed his climb up the leaderboard.
Dominguez’s performances caught the eye of Amir Aziz, owner of OCM (club outils moteurs), and he has elected to give Dominguez a full sponsorship for the 2014 Mopar CSBK series and an early start to things with the DR race support. Team manager Michael Chun and mechanic Kyle Ormianer accompanied Dominguez to DR and will be joined for the Mopar CSBK season by Robert Holt. The OCM team has two Kawasaki ZX-10R superbikes for Dominguez, and both were shod with Pirelli tires in the Pan American races as they will be in Canada.
Dominguez was surprised to find he had been invited by the promoters to ride as a Canadian, an invitation he eagerly accepted. “It was really special and an honour to have both the Dominican and the Canadian national anthems played on the podium. Being from the Dominican and being able to win this Pan American Championship in my native country, while representing Canada, was really cool.”
From the podium Franklyn dedicated his championship win to his good friend Kiurys Martinez who was killed in a crash while practicing for the races the Sunday previous. (Nov 10th). Dominguez gave his championship chequered flag to the Martinez family.
— From Frank Wood
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