Mladin doubles at Infineon

Mladin closes gap with Infineon double

(AMA Pro Racing Release) Impossible as it may seem, Mat Mladin was even more impressive on Sunday than he was in winning Saturday’s AMA Superbike final at Infineon Raceway, stringing together another virtuoso performance that resulted in a second breakaway victory of the weekend.

The six-time series champion credited the new launch control system recently implemented into his Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 with his drag-race caliber starts in Sonoma, slyly noting that it’s easier to win wire-to-wire than it after falling outside the top twenty from pole as has happened to him in the past.

Mladin rocketed out to a full-second advantage following the first lap, while rival/teammate Ben Spies was desperately fighting to get past a quick-starting Aaron Yates on the satellite Jordan Motorsports Suzuki GSX-R1000 and keep touch.

It didn’t take too long, as the Texan dove up the inside of the Georgian in Turn 7 on lap 2 of 28, but by the time they came around to start the third circulation, Mladin had already built up nearly two-and-a-half seconds of space.

Spies kept it right there for the next 60 kilometers, occasionally making up a few tenths here and losing a couple there. However, Mladin put his head down on lap 20 as a frustrated Spies came to the realization that he wasn’t going to be able to make up the margin, and the Aussie quickly upped his lead, working it up to 9.477 seconds at the checkered flag.

Mladin’s weekend double has allowed the six-time champ to complete his surge back after crashing out of the lead at the Daytona season opener, equaling the defending champion in the points race 238 to 238 following 7 of 19 races.

Having taken 10 of that last 12 AMA Superbike race wins, including 5 of 7 this season, some might say that Mladin has reclaimed the momentum in the rivalry, although he’ll tell you that he has little use for such concepts.

“I don’t believe in momentum, to be honest with you,” Mladin commented. “I believe you turn up every weekend to the racetrack to do the best you can. If I looked at momentum, then I should have just packed up after Daytona. We crashed out of the lead there with a bit of a problem that we had. But I’ve never been one to believe in it. I turn up every weekend with a fresh state of mind, to go out there and race as hard as possible, and see if we can’t get the job done.

“It was a good weekend for us. Of course we came in here wanting to get the double win, obviously. As I said before, we’re really concentrating on just riding hard and trying to get as many wins as possible, and let the cards lay where they do in September. So far we’ve had a pretty decent season.”

Second-place finisher Spies remarked, “Today’s race was definitely more positive than yesterday’s race. We got stuck behind Aaron the first few laps. When we got around, we just tried to drop the hammer and stay with (Mladin) and maybe catch a little bit. There were a couple laps where we made a little bit of inroads.

“When we got into lapped traffic, I could see he got held up, and when he got held up I pushed real hard, and then I got held up. Lapped traffic kind of equaled out both of us for the day. I just tried to keep the pressure on. After half-race, with about 10 to go, I could see that it looked like every time I sped up, he did too. It was just a matter of how big the gap he wanted today. I put as much pressure as I could today, and at the end I was just having to ride too hard to try to stay there or catch, so we just settled second.”

While he was unable to run with the leading Yosh superstars, American Honda’s Jake Zemke was able to break free from the remainder of the pack after taking over third from a crashing Yates at the end of lap 2.

Zemke’s third-place ride was his first podium finish since taking third in the season opener. “It was pretty lonely out there,” Jake admitted. “These two split straight away, and when Yates crashed there in the last corner, it just balked me up for that second. But I didn’t have the pace for either one of these two today.”

Team Kawasaki’s Roger Hayden looked like he might have a chance of running down Zemke to steal away the position and claim a career-first AMA Superbike podium, but his ZX-10R’s engine went south on him while working lap 23 after having closed to within striking distance of the Californian.

The next pack of factory riders ran reasonably close together, each rider taking turns charging or fading through the ranks. Second American Honda entry Miguel DuHamel fended off a late charge from Yoshimura Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden for fourth, while Yamaha USA’s Jason DiSalvo, who appeared to have a tight grip on fourth earlier in the contest, dropped down to sixth as the race wore on.

Yamaha’s Eric Bostrom fell off the pace but managed to stay ahead of a feisty James Ellison on the Corona Extra Honda CBR1000RR for seventh. Jordan Suzuki’s Jake Holden and second Kawasaki pilot Jamie Hacking completed the top ten.

Mladin and Spies will take their ‘classic in the making’ AMA Superbike Championship showdown to Road America in two weeks time.