Written by:
AMA Pro Racing
05/04/2009
Birmingham, AL
Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin (Photo: Brian J Nelson)
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Both Mat Mladin and Martin Cardenas turned in successful encore performances in the Honda Superbike Classic at Barber Motorsports Park on a wild weather day in central Alabama.
The day's three races were delayed by two hours and each race was shortened five laps from its scheduled distance as a band of severe storms swept through the area and tornado warnings were issued in the early afternoon.
However, not even the weather could stop Mladin's run of dominance in 2009 AMA Pro National Guard American Superbike presented by Parts Unlimited competition on a weekend when sevens were wild for Mladin. Mladin fittingly rode the No. 7 Rockstar/Makita Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 to his seventh consecutive victory to open the season and extended his lead in the point standings as he looks for his seventh career American Superbike championship. Mladin leads teammate Tommy Hayden by 77 points, 220-143, after seven of 20 rounds in the 2009 championship.
Just as he did in Saturday's first race of the Honda Superbike Classic doubleheader, Mladin started from pole and surrendered the lead heading into the first turn. A lap-and-a-half later, however, the Australian muscled past leader Josh Hayes in Turn 5 and led the rest the way en route to a 2.745-second victory over Aaron Yates. It was Mladin's 79th career AMA Pro victory and moved him to within seven of Miguel Duhamel's record of 86 career wins.
"I've had seven in a row, and obviously nobody has had any more than seven before so we'll see if we can go to Infineon and get another one," said Mladin, who earned his fifth consecutive Barber Motorsports Park victory and ninth overall. "The bike worked great today, we found some stuff out this morning in the warm up. I had a completely different motorcycle this afternoon and very similar lap times to what I did this morning even with the condition of the track. It was pretty good. I'm pretty happy with the bike. We definitely made some progress this week."
The runner-up result was the best of the season for Yates on the No. 23 Jordan Suzuki GSX-R1000, topping a previous best ride of fifth in the second race of the Road Atlanta doubleheader last month. Mladin, Yates and Hayden were three of the six riders utilizing the 2009 Suzuki GSX-R1000 for the first time this weekend and were joined on the new bikes by Blake Young (No. 79 Rockstar/Makita Yoshimura Suzuki), Geoff May (No. 54 National Guard Jordan Suzuki) and Chris Ulrich (No. 18 Roadracingworld.com Suzuki).
"It's been an up-and-down year for us," said Yates. "We got the '09 Suzuki a couple of weeks ago, did some riding on it and got a few things sorted out. I'm really feeling good about the bike; it's running pretty good. We had a good package in yesterday's race also, I just kind of messed up the start on that and it put us way back. It really feels good to get up here, back on the podium and show that the Jordan Suzuki guys are working hard and the new GSX-R1000 is going good."
