Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

With three laps left, he led by 9.5 seconds. He backed that down to win by 8.1 seconds in a perfect display of lead management. The win was the 21st of Mladin's career, a mark that moves him past Fred Merkel and into second on the all-time AMA Superbike win list. Mladin is now just five victories behind Miguel DuHamel, the all-time leader with 26. Although Mladin was clearly superior here, Yates and Eric Bostrom made the most out of what he left behind, the pair battling over second place, with Yates ultimately earning the position with Bostrom third. Originally, Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts had been in the mix for second place, but a bad rear tire led to his demise. He ended up pitting for new in his GSX-RlOOO). Tenth place went to local James Randolph on his Lion Racing GSX-R 1000. Among the notable nonfinishers was Ducati Austin's Giovanni Bussei, the Italian crashing out of what was just his second AMA Superbike National. Bussei had made a great save after hitting oil in turn four, but two corners later - and still rather flustered - he erred in the Corkscrew, and that led to a crash that put him out of action. It was the first hiccup of his brief AMA career. Could anyone match fast-guy Mladin, the pacesetter from the moment a wheel was turned at Laguna Seca? In practice and qualifying, the answer was an emphatic no. Under clear and sunny skies, the rest rubber and re-joined the field ultimately to finish 11th. The result puts a serious hamper on his championship of the field was hoping for a different answer come race time. The holeshot went to Eric Bostrom as the field ran up over the hill that is aspirations, and he's now a full race behind - 36 points - Mladin. With Roberts slowing, American Honda's Ben Bostrom worked his way turn one, but Mladin answer.ed quickly with a pass in turn two - Andretti Curve. "I just wanted to get the lead, and past his teammate to take over fourth - a spot he would latch on to despite not ever feeling completely comfortable with his setup. Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore had his best race of the season. the Californian finishing fifth after a string of five straight fifth-place finishes. An overnight shipment of a new, pro- Eric got the holeshot so I got by him in turn one," Mladin explained later. "I didn't want to get held up too much because I thought I might be able to get away." grammable electronic control unit fixed what ailed his Suzuki GSXRIOOO, and Pridmore was a new man come race time, lapping faster in the race than he was able to in qualifying. American Honda's Miguel DuHamel ended up sixth - a rather dismal finish for the gritty veteran. He struggled to find a setup that would work, and he didn't come up with one. The result was a bike that was extremely unsettled - and a sixthplace finish. Behind DuHamel came the privateers: Corona Extra Suzuki's Jordan Szoke coming out on top to finish seventh, while Millennium Motorsports' Shawn Higbee followed, leading Prieto Racing's Michael Barnes (complete with Higbee's spare motor Ben Bostrom and Roberts got away in third and fourth, but Yates wasn't prepared to watch his teammate ride off in the distance, so he quickly tried to make moves on the Honda pair - though he wasn't completely happy with how his rear tire felt at this point in the race. Mladin, meanwhile, was increasing his lead by half a second a lap, the Aussie leading lap one by .531 of a second, a gap that went to an even second a lap later. Yates was still behind Eric Bostrom, with Ben Bostrom and Roberts trying to keep pace. Lapping in the low 1 :26 range, Mladin gapped the Eric Bostrom/ Yates feud by 1.5 seconds after four laps were completed with those three the only riders cutting 1 :26 laps. Mladin, though still pulling away, was doing so at a slower clip as the race settled in. From the very beginning of practice and qualifying at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, one thing was clear: Mat Mladin meant business. It mattered not that there was just a single qualifying session on a warm Friday aR",rnoon on the Monterey Peninsula because that was aU the Australian needed. When aU was said and done, MJadin had earned pole position - the 29th of his AMA career - with a lap of 1:25.549. The Yoshimura Suzuki rider was the first to drop into the 26s and the only rider to crack the 1:25-barrier. He did his best time with just over eight minutes to go in the hour-long session, and it was the best by .7 of a second. It was only marginally faster than he'd ever gone around Laguna Seca, his previous best coming in 1998 when he was on the pole with a lap of 1:25.600 on a much smoother track. While MJadin didn't get under the AMA lap record of I :25.507 (that was set by Vance & Hines Ducat;'s Anthony Gobert in 1999) during qualifying, he did better the mark the following day during practice. And then he bettered it again on Saturday morning. Still, his 1:25.549 is the time that earned him pole position. "The bottom line is we're getting from corner to corner quicker than we ever have," Mladin said. "So, you know, on a track like this, horsepower and speed probably don't playas big a part as they do at other tracks. This is sort of like Sears Point. If you've got your bike working, it's going to go good. If it's not working, it doesn't matter how fast it is, you're not going to go good. At the moment, the thing's working like it's been working at most races this year. So I'm pretty happy with the time. A little bit quicker than this morning, but track temperature was up about 13-14° C, so it's quite a bit warmer this afternoon. It was good to go a little bit quicker than we did this morning." Mladin's pole was his fifth of the year, and it not only extended his AMA record... it also gave him a championship point. After qualifying, he trailed Eric Bostrom by two points, 321-319, in advance of Saturday's race. Thursday was the beginning of a long weekend for Mladin and the other AMA riders contesting both AMA and World Superbike. Unlike Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom, who said he looked forward to it, Mladin was unenthusiastic. "The World Superbike thing is a big pain in the ass to me," Mladin said. "If I had something to prove, like it seems that some of the AMA guys have - they're here to try to prove something - then okay. But I really don't. I'm here to try to win the AMA Championship. If I could do a World Superbike race without having to concentrate on AMA, I'd be much happier. I'd be here, ready to go flat-out for World Superbike. We'll see what happens. I'm definitely going to give it 100 percent, but as I've said in the past, I'd trade two World Superbike wins for the one on Saturday any day. No problem at all. I'd take the 37 points on Saturday and run." Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts was another rider displeased with doing double-duty. His case, however, was a bit different. He .was doing double duty in AMA Superbike and Supersport. But he was fast during qualifying, and it put him second on the grid for the National. "I'm so confused right now, riding the bike [the RC51] and riding the 600 here," Roberts said. "The sessions are back to back. I'm just confused. I hate riding it [the 600] right now. I'm about ready to park one of them. Things are all right. It's just. quick here. You just get on the bike, and the next thing you know you qualify and it's over - wait until the race. I think we have a good setup. I think we're a lot closer than it looks. I think we can hopefully have something for Mat here, for sure." Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom made a splash with his new "Dukes of Hazzard" -inspired Alpinestars leathers. The front of the leathers mimicked Boss Hogg's white suit, complete with bow tie, while the back had an orange background and confederate flag. Style was one thing, substance quite another, with Bostrom unable to complete a clean lap en route to the third-fastest time. "We just kind of got bit by the time thing," Bostrom said. "Everybody's got that problem, but it probably got us worse because we don't have teammates to test tires. So for me, I've got to try to get through everything, and we didn't have a chance to do that. But on my very best laps, I only had to pass like two lappers, so I figure it definitely cost us a half-second. On my very best lap, I got blocked going into tum 10 huge by a lapper, and it really wrecked my lap time. So I don't know. We'll just go out and try to put our head down when the race comes. I think we stand a great chance in the race. I'm looking forward to it. But I'm definitely disappointed with qualifying." Unlike Mladin, Bostrom liked the idea of doing double-duty. "I like it," Bostrom said. "Any chance to get to ride World Superbike is great. I, obviously, wish I could be running a quicker bike. I think my bike's going to be hurting out there, but we'll see how it does. That's all we can do. Go out there and ride around and have fun. I always enjoy taking laps here, but all the same, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well." Considering he didn't get many laps on the track because of the amount of time he spent in the pits, Yates was still able to post the fourth-best time. "We started out, we actually went out on a used tire from practice this morning because we didn't get that many laps on it this morning - just to see how it was," Yates said. "It was decent. It didn't really have the grip I was hoping for. It was kind of comfortable riding around and just feeling what the bike might be "like at the end of the race. We came in and did something, changed something, and then - we made a big change in the forks and stuff, forks and shocks, from this morning's session. We made some clicks there, went back out and it still didn't feel as good. So they got my other bike that was under the tent, a bike I guess they weren't planning on me riding, and got it. So I went out on it and did a few laps and came in. I guess when they were trying to set it up to go ride, they had a problem getting the front wheel in and out of it, clearing the-brake caliper and stuff, so that took a while to get that sorted out. J went out for a few laps, came in, and then we tried some of the Japanese tires. By that time it was the end of the session. I did a couple of laps, and the rear never really seemed to come around. So we stuck another tire on it and only did a couple laps on it. It felt reaJly good. We stuck it in there, and I did about three laps at the end, pushing really hard. I was having big problems with the front. It was just out of shape big -time. I pushed the front real bad in [tum] II, left a big black mark and almost fell. But that was on my fastest lap. So we've got work to do." cue I ... n ... _ S • JULY 23,2003 15

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