Mladin wins race 2 cal speedway

Mladin wins race 2 by 0.035

(AMA Pro Racing Release) The top two Superbike racers in America continued their heavyweight clash for supremacy at California Speedway, as Mat Mladin responded to Ben Spies’ Saturday triumph with a powerful counterpunch on Sunday. The six-time AMA Superbike king fought back a determined challenge from the defending series champion to beat him to the checkered flag by a scant 0.035 seconds.

The race developed into three distinct sections. In the early stages, Yoshimura Suzuki ace Mladin appeared to be in a class of his own, dropping the field led by teammate at a rate of several tenths per lap. His advantage peaked out at 3.2 seconds following 16 of 28 laps and then the tide started to turn.

The 22-year-old Texan came charging back in the heat and erased Mladin’s padding even quicker than it was assembled, knocking big chunks out of the lead with successive laps in the 1’23.7s. By lap 22, the difference was just 0.073 and the face of the contest again changed, this time transforming into a one-on-one duel to the flag.

Despite his superior speed late, Spies was unable to take over the race. Mladin did an incredible job controlling from the front despite dealing with some late race tire woes.

For a brief moment on lap 23, Spies swung around the outside of Mladin and into first heading into the Turn 3 chicane, but the experienced pilot immediately ducked back through in heavy traffic to re-secure his lead. The move proved pivotal as it’s questionable whether or not the Australian would have been able to strike back if he had allowed the Texan to find his rhythm with a clear track in front of him.

For the remaining five laps Spies harassed the leader, showing him a wheel on several occasions, but he never again found a way into first. His last ditch effort to power alongside Mladin at the flag fell short by just fractions of a second.

“Honestly, if we’d got stuck behind, it would’ve been very hard to get back past,” Mladin said of the importance of keeping Spies behind him over the crucial last several laps. “The edge of the rear tire -- we were missing some rubber with about seven or eight laps to go. On the very side in the left-handers it was very, very difficult. A bit of vibration. I was just trying to hang off more and more, and hold the bike upright as much as I could. I knew if Ben got in front of me and got a clear lap, it was going to be very hard for me to get a drive with him. I had to get back past, and then just make it as wide as possible.”

He continued, focusing on the year ahead of him, “Listen, I have no illusions that the season is going to be anything but tough and hard racing. I’m looking forward to it. That race was just a whole lot of fun, that’s for sure. I really enjoyed it. Hopefully we’re going to get more of that throughout the year. That’s what I thrive for now.”

Spies remarked, “I rode as hard as I could. He got off to a good pace and got to the front. I struggled to get to second, and when I did, the pace he set, it wasn’t really trying to catch it, it was just to stay there and hope something happened. We finally kind of stopped the bleeding a little bit, and got the gap about the same, and I saw he ran into a couple of small problems, and we were able to get slowly up onto the wheel.

“I just wish we could have got around and tried to set a pace, but I couldn’t pass. It was all my fault; I couldn’t get it done. He rode really good, and the pace he did in pretty much 80% of the race is what did it. I just couldn’t do it today. But the bike was good. I felt like I rode okay and put some pressure on in the end. I just couldn’t quite get the pass done.”

Yamaha USA’s Eric Bostrom picked up his second third-place finish of the weekend. While he improved substantially overnight, the blistering pace set by Mladin and Spies meant that the final podium finisher was 21.315 seconds off the win.

“Our goal is to catch Ben and Mat,” Bostrom commented. “I don’t care if we finish second or 21st, it makes no difference. We know what our job is. Our work is cut out for us. It’s a big job. They're both laying down a blistering pace. My pace was basically a second better than yesterday, for the better part of the race. Then at the end there, we had a little trouble, and they went even quicker. So we’ll just keep trying. The good news is, we made a lot of progress from yesterday, and the bad news is they did too.”

Yoshimura Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden battled past and held off the American Honda duo of Jake Zemke and Miguel DuHamel to claim fourth. Hayden’s finish saw the same four riders dominate the top of the charts throughout qualifying and the Fontana, CA races.

A seesawing tilt waged by Monster Energy Kawasaki teammates Roger Hayden and Jamie Hacking and Jordan Suzuki’s Aaron Yates was won in the end by Hayden, just a tenth of a second ahead of Hacking and three tenths over Yates.

Yamaha USA’s Jason DiSalvo rounded out the top ten, finishing in front of former Grand Prix racers Doug Chandler, James Ellison, and Kurtis Roberts.

Both FBF MV Agusta entries retired from the race. Luca Scassa’s F4 suffered from an electrical issue while Matt Lynn’s machine had a broken shock.

The AMA Superbike Championship takes a few weeks off before picking up again in Sonoma, CA at Infineon Raceway on May 18-20.