Written by:
Kevin Krefting
06/01/2007
Elkhart Lake, WI
Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin extended his recent return to dominance, scoring his 57th career AMA Superbike victory on Saturday afternoon at Road America. After the skies cleared just in time to allow for a dry final, Mladin stumbled out of the gates from pole, but quickly regrouped to battle his way into the lead by the end of lap two, a position he would hold to the checkered flag.
As per usual, only one man was able to even keep the Australian legend honest: defending series champion Ben Spies.
The 22-year-old Texan rocketed to the holeshot and pulled an early advantage as Mladin dropped to fourth behind Jordan Suzuki's Aaron Yates and American Honda's Jake Zemke. During the time it took the six-time champ to work his way into second, Spies had opened up a 1.213-second advantaged on the race's first circulation of the four-mile raceway. However, with a clear track in front of him, Mladin quickly gobbled up the gap and positioned himself to steal the lead as the two crossed the stripe to start the third lap.
Mladin then went about adding several tenths to his padding for the next couple laps but mysteriously slowed while working lap 5 and 6, allowed Spies to close back to 0.692 seconds after having fallen back to 1.371 seconds off the lead only two laps earlier.
Mladin picked his pace back up and, while Spies kept him honest to the end, he proved to be in complete control to the flag.
After the race, the former Cagiva GP runner explained what caused his momentary dip in performance. "Lap three, I believe, I split an exhaust pipe -- at least I think that's what happened. I had my head down, I'd taken off, and something happened. It was very hard to concentrate for all the race from there because the bike was just very, very loud. I couldn't hear myself thinking. It was that bad.
"And I lost of lot of top-end power up the front straight. On all the straights I was changing the gears much, much later. And by the time I got into top gear on most of the straights I was 150 or 200 yards past where I was in the warm-up. I really had to change my riding a little bit as of when that happened, to try and carry more rolling speed, because the thing wasn't accelerating like it was on the first two laps. So we had some issues in that race and it was nice just to hold on and get the win. I'm sure we'll fix it tonight and come out tomorrow with a better motorcycle."
