Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin (Photo: Brian J Nelson)
Fate did everything in its power to prevent Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki from upping their near-incomprehensible AMA Superbike victory streak to a nice round 40 on Saturday at Mid-Ohio, but in the end nothing could stop Mat Mladin and Ben Spies from notching up yet another 1-2.
Consider some of the obstacles that stood in their path:
Defending champ Spies entered the round still recovering from recent appendix surgery.
Monster Energy Kawasaki's Jamie Hacking tapped into a source of additional speed that allowed him to lead a practice session and compete head-to-head with the Suzukis in the race.
And three red flags -- the first coming just as Mladin was starting to inch away from Hacking at the front, and a second apparently caused by a fan who dumped out a cooler over a bridge, dripping liquid on the track's surface which forced the Australian to crash out of the lead after grabbing the restart holeshot.
But ultimately, Mladin still managed to smoothly escape for the 69th AMA Superbike win of his illustrious career, and Spies, who looked as if his day might be over when a near highside caused him a great deal of pain to his mending abdomen following the second red flag, worked past Hacking late to cement the Yosh 1-2.
"That’s the way it goes," Mladin said, "It was a long day for everyone and it’s good to get the win. It would be good to keep going and get a full 26-lap race in at this place because we haven’t done that for a while. It was a good day for us and hopefully we can do it tomorrow.”
Commenting on his crash, the Australian remarked, "My feet just came off the pegs and the bike came out from under me and then I saw Jamie had crashed behind me. I actually apologized to him because I thought I’d screwed up. I didn’t obviously think there was something on the track from the lap before that lap. I thought something was wrong because I had a little bit of a problem with my clutch on that warm-up lap and I thought maybe I’d done something funny. But Jamie said, ‘I hit something or whatever.’ That’s how it goes.”
