Pirelli Pro SPort bike Preview
Wide open i
t used to be that the outlook for the Pro sport bike championship in the national road race tour was a mirror image of the superbike class, as the
same cast of riders and teams invariably doubled their efforts. that is not the case this year, however. Having equaled Don Munroe’s record of
five consecutive Pro Sport Bike titles last summer Jordan Szoke has elected not to defend his number one plate this year, meaning for the first time since 2005 (when Steve Crevier won on a Honda CBR600RR) Canada will have a new middleweight champ. With Szoke out of the picture the field is
theoretically wide open for the Pirelli-spon- sored class in 2011, although there are some names that can definitely be ranked as series favourites. Topping the list must be Jodi Christie and
the Jodi Christie Racing Honda CBR600RR team. Last summer the Keene, ON teenager emerged as Szoke’s closest title threat. Al- though he was never able to beat the Kawasaki rider there was little to choose be- tween them at most venues. And of course
new chaMp guaranteed in prO spOrt Bike By John Hopkins
there was the famous confrontation at Mo- sport International Raceway, where the two collided and Christie crashed two corners from the finish. So far ahead of everyone else were they at the time that the youngster was able to get up, dust himself off, retrieve his bike from the haybales and still finish third. The financial stresses of the off-season
have shrunk Christie’s Honda effort, but he still retains the valuable services of John Sharrard of Accelerated Technologies, who provided a cool and experienced head dur- ing a dramatic 2010 season. Despite a fall and sixth place finish in the tricky conditions at ICAR, Christie should be a force this sea- son, especially at venues like Shannonville Motorsport Park and Mosport, where he has traditionally excelled. Frank Trombino threw up a bit of a wild-
card in the Pirelli Pro Sport Bike title race by winning the opening event of the season at Circuit ICAR. Trombino always figures into the mix whenever he shows up at a national event, but the catch recently has been that his appearances have tended to be hit and miss. The win in May was his first on the na- tional tour since 2002, and was an impres-
sive performance. The wet and tricky track conditions caught out notables like Christie and Alex Welsh, but Trombino kept it all to- gether with his Suzuki Canada / Hindle / Sturgess Cycle-backed Suzuki GSX-R600. Trombino is always a threat at Shan-
nonville, where he has won several RACE SuperSeries championships, he was a back-to-back Superbike winner at Mosport in 2000 and 2001, and he has been on the Sport Bike podium at AMP. If the Wood- bridge, ON veteran perseveres with a full 2011 campaign he could be holding the number one plate by the end of the season. After two years as a Kawasaki factory
pilot Uxbridge, ON’s Welsh has returned to where the magic began for him, reconnect- ing with Zaid Saleemi and the Z1 CycleTech team. Saleemi and Welsh stood the Cana- dian road racing scene on its ear in 2008 as Welsh rode a Triumph 675 Daytona to the Pro Rookie of the Year award. That led to his two-year stint with Kawasaki, which didn’t provide the results windfall some may have been expecting. A hint of the old fire returned at the end of
the 2010 season at AMP however, when Welsh won a Pro Sport Bike race on his first
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