Trevor Daley has participated in the Canadian National Superbike championship for well over a decade, but this year his CSBK schedule is a partial one, due to a range of other professional commitments – Daley is a well-established motorsports builder and fabricator through his shop, OneSpeed. Prior to motorcycle competition, Daley was climbing the ladder in the four-wheeled world and has worked for top teams in endurance auto racing.
Daley has a good sense of motorsport history, and prior to the most recent Bridgestone CSBK National round at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, he was trying to determine who else had scored Pro Sport Bike (middleweight production) and Superbike victories on the same day. He reached out to me with the question, and I gave him my best guess – I wasn’t in the office.
Back in the day when manufacturer support was prevalent and many of the distributors ran their programs in house, most of CSBK’s top guns ran both classes every weekend. The pinnacle of this era was the late 2000s, when the Pickering-based Canadian Kawasaki effort lead by Jordan Szoke was dominant in both classes with a stand-out program that wouldn’t look out of place in the World championship paddock.
Perhaps the most famous multi-class, same day national winner was Steve Crevier, who won Superbike and Pro 600 Production (middleweight, the precursor of Sport Bike) for Yamaha in 1979 as well as Pro 250 Grand Prix on a Pat Gonsalves-owned Aprilia. The year before, Crevier had resurrected his Pro career in the US with a Yamaha TZ250 in the GP category, but somehow, he wound up on the exotic Aprilia the following year.
Steve won all three national titles in 1979, back when the GP category was considered the third feature class and attracted solid attention. Rick Hobbs, his tuner at the time, also had a day job at a major Toronto shop as service manager, but managed to keep three quite different bikes running, even with the all-out “squid kid” at the controls.
Other Canadian stars on the multi-win per day list include Michel Mercier, Pascal Picotte, Don Munroe (who won the Superbike, Pro Open Sport Bike and Pro 600cc Sport Bike titles in the same season!), Brett McCormick and Jodi Christie. All these racers “did the double,” more than once, according to CSBK’s chief statistician, Cam “by the numbers” Bickle.
Circling back to Szoke, he ran both Superbike and Sport Bike classes for Scott Miller’s Fast Company Honda squad in 2010 and came oh-so-close to pulling off a perfect season in both divisions – it came down to the wire at Atlantic Motorsport Park’s final east coast round.
Szoke earned the first-ever perfect CSBK season with his silver CBR1000RR (since repeated by “Jordan of the Jungle” for BMW), but his matching middleweight goal was upended by the works Kawasaki of Alex Welsh, Szoke’s team-mate the year before aboard the very well developed, Mike Crompton built 636 Ninja.
Back to the modern day, and Daley joined the CSBK tour for 2024 at round 2 at Grand Bend, a venue where he has often featured but sometimes encountered….”challenges.” Last year, he fell early in the rain in the tricky final turn but remounted, almost taking a dramatic win with a dramatic last lap charge at winner Alex Dumas.
This year at Grand Bend, Daley was running one of the Suzuki GSX-R750 racers built for the Daytona 200, the sister machine to the bike he helped build for Ben Young. Top Canadian at Daytona, Young won the opening Econo Lube Pro Sport Bike race at Shannonville but suffered a blown head gasket on the Sunday.
Daley had overheating issues under control, earned a Sport Bike podium Saturday, then grabbed his second career middleweight Sport Bike class victory Sunday after a storming effort after an early off-track excursion.
Then the rains came, and Daley switched to his Superbike and made the most of Bridgestone’s rain rubber. Chasing down early leader Sam Guerin’s BMW, Daley made the most of traffic challenges to score his first career Superbike success – and a “Daley double” of feature classes, as he soon quipped on the Grand Bend podium.
At C.T.M.P., Daley again had his pair of mismatched Suzukis, with different numbers but similar performance. In Pro Sport Bike on Saturday, Daley was closing on the leaders in fourth place when a fall took him out and did damage to his hand. The Superbike race didn’t go well, no surprise given the state of his digits, and Daley faded to ninth.
On Sunday, Daley was energized, and motivated to “do the double” again, and the conditions played his way. In Sport Bike, he battled for the lead early on a damp track with returning hero Jodi Christie, aboard the rebuilt GSX-R750 Young had used at the start of the season.
Daley eventually won by four seconds from Christie, while Sousa GSX-R600 pilot, BC teen-ager A. J. Van Winkle, worked his way up to third before a deluge stopped action just past mid-race.
Suzuki Canada had a great middleweight day on Sunday at “old Mosport,” their success underlined by Sebastien Tremblay’s gamble to switch tires after the warm-up lap with his Turcotte GSX-R750. Conditions and the early red flag stoppage meant his tire strategy wasn’t proven on the day, but his come-from-behind 11th was enough to confirm the popular veteran as the Pro Sport Bike national champ for 2024.
On to Sunday’s Superbike race, and this time the track was wet but drying, meaning some aces gambled on a mixed tire strategy, including Guerin and Saturday victor Dumas. Both opted for a wet front and dry rear, making the first lap a risky affair. Both fell on the first tour.
Photo by Bob Szoke.
(Guerin had gambled on a mixed rubber plan to win on Saturday at the previous round at Shubenacadie, and has a feel for these conditions. He was also dominant on a drying track last Sunday on a Harley-Davidson in the Canadian debut of the Bagger Racing League.)
Dumas was out on the spot, but Guerin remounted after a nasty high side, and then put on an impressive, fast-paced charge though the pack. Also showing well after a tire gamble was Szoke, continuing his return to form with a charge that netted fourth.
Guerin got up to sixth with his EFC Group BMW, meaning he is still in title contention (just) heading to the final event at Shannonville on Labor Day.
But the focus was at the front, where Daley quickly moved to the point and then held off good friend Young’s works M-model. Back on track after a year off and already riding hurt, “T.V. Tommy Casas” earned third, making it a Suzuki-BMW-Yamaha top three.
Celebrating on the podium for the second time that day and the fourth time in his abbreviated 2024 CSBK season, an emotional Daley thanked former top racer and chassis guru Jon Cornwell as well as Australian engineer Jake Stake, usually a BMW tuner. He also showed off his truly mangled hand, and a trip to the doctor at the start of the week revealed two broken bones.
Daley intends to race at Shannonville for the final 2024 event, and his hand should be mostly healed by that time. Don’t be shocked if it rains.
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