Canadians fare well as racing season ends

DON EMPEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Andrew Nelson (26) and Karl Daigle (78) celebrate, as Nelson won the last Shannonville 600 race but Daigle won the 2008 title.

Larry Tate

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

The Canadian motorcycle road racing season ended at Shannonville Motorsport Park last weekend, but also at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca, Calif.

At Shannonville, the final event in the RACE Ontario regional series saw talented teenager Karl Daigle from Quebec take both the Pro Superbike and Pro 600 championships by narrow margins.

In Pro 600, he managed to squeeze by Andrew Nelson of Kars, Ont. by only four points, after finishing second to Nelson's narrow win. The Pro Superbike title was even tighter as, by finishing third, he edged out Franklin Dominguez by a single point.

Dominguez was followed to the line by Nelson, who took third overall in the standings.

South of the border, five-time Canadian Superbike champ Jordan Szoke got a chance to ride a factory Kawasaki superbike in the last AMA race of the season. He was called in at the last minute to replace Roger Lee Hayden (youngest brother of 2006 world champion Nicky Hayden), who was injured at the last race.

With a new bike (different engine, electronics, suspension ... nothing like his Canadian ride) and new team, he did remarkably well to qualify 12th and finish ninth.

The guy finishing behind him was no slouch, either. Chris Peris of Calgary (who finished fourth behind Szoke in this year's Canadian national series) took 10th on his dealer-supported ESP Suzuki GSX-R1000. Two Canadians in the top 10 – three if you count Quebec-born but now Las Vegas-domiciled Miguel Duhamel on a factory Honda in seventh – was a great end to the U.S. season for Canadian fans.

But looking to the future, perhaps even more impressive was Emerson Connor of Burlington, Ont., who turned 14 yesterday. Emerson has been racing in the KTM Red Bull Rookies Cup series this season – out of more than 1,000 applicants, 23 were chosen, including Emerson.

He finished the series in eighth overall, good enough to get him invited to the world final of the KTM Rookies series (which runs in Europe as well as the U.S.) at the final round of the world Moto GP series at Valencia in Spain on Oct. 26.

Moto GP

Overseas, Valentino Rossi stuck it to everyone again at Motegi Circuit in Japan, handily winning the Moto GP race and cementing his sixth premier-class world title (two in 500 cc GP, and four in Moto GP).

Ducati's Casey Stoner took the early lead, had a brief fight with Dani Pedrosa on the Repsol Honda, while Rossi picked off riders in a tidy and workmanlike fashion, getting his Fiat Yamaha past Stoner on lap 14 of the 24 before motoring off into the distance.

Stoner held on for second, while Pedrosa was demoted off the podium on the last lap by Rossi's Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo who put a hard pass on his fellow Spaniard – they hit, although neither fell – to take third after also scoring the pole position.

"It's difficult to compare titles, but this one definitely feels great," Rossi said. "I feel very good, because the battle was very tough this year, especially with Stoner and Pedrosa. It has been a long season with a lot of hard races."

Moto GP is in a bit of turmoil at the moment, as organizers have decided the series will go to a "spec tire" next season. That basically means one brand of supplier, although the way things usually work out in this game, different bikes and even different riders get different tires, so how this is supposed to help competition is beyond the ken of mere mortals.

AMA Superbike

Mat Mladin had already lost the 2008 title war to his Rockstar Yoshimura Suzuki teammate Ben Spies, but he comfortably won the final battle at Laguna Seca, leading convincingly from flag to flag.

Spies got an uncharacteristic bad start and was back in seventh on the first lap, and while he managed to quickly claw back up to second, Mladin was long gone.

The only AMA class that hadn't been decided before the weekend was the Supersport (600) class, which went to Ben Bostrom, thanks to his second-place finish at Laguna. Jake Zemke had already tied up the Formula Extreme title, and Aaron Yates the Superstock crown.

Larry Tate covers motorcycle racing for Wheels. He can be reached at larryt@primus.ca

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