Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128315
AMA Chevrolet S uper bike Championship A solid game plan and consistently fast lap times add up to a third Daytona 200 victory for Mat Mladin --------By PAUL CARRUTHERS PHOTOS BY HENNY RAy ABRAMS (L eft) Mat Mladin sprays the champagne in Victory Lane after winning the th ird Daytona 2 0 0 of his ca ree r. (Belo w ) Mladin (1) and his teammate Aaran Yates (2 0) lead the way into tur n one at the start af the 200. American Handa's Ben Bastram (1 5 5) and Miguel Duhamel (17) give cha se. aybe th e key to wi nning the Dayton a 20 0 is not really wan ting to . Well , that and doing consistent ly quick lap times and having t he most efficient pit st o ps. And a solid strategy wo rks we ll, too, even o ne that' s a bit uno rthodox. Unlike his American counterparts, who as a w hole hunger after victory in the Daytona 200 like no other race, the 200 is just another motorcycle race to Mat Mladin; Daytona International Speedway just another place to score as many points as possible in a que st to win yet another Superbike Championship. The race doesn't hold a special place in his heart. In fact, it puts a pit in his stomach. Yet over the past five years , Mladin has left Florida with three Daytona 200 victories, counting the one he scored here today. The Mr. Daytona of the new millennium? Inarguably, that's Mladin. Com ing into the 63rd edition of the famous race , however, M 16 Mladin wasn't drawing much attention, in part because of his ''I'll finish where I feel comfo rtable and move o n" approach to the race . "I guess we did rea d a fair amount about everybody else," Mladin said, postvicto ry. "But I guess it's hard to count out a four-time champion of the series and a two-time Daytona winner. Y ou never know what he's going to do. This week everything went well for us. We had a plan on Thursday - actually, maybe even on Wednesday - with what we were going to do , and we were either going to w in the race or lose the race. And it worked out for us, and we won ." The Dayto na win was Mladin's 25th career AMA Super bike victory, putt ing him within one of tying all-time leader Miguel Duhamel on the career list. Mladin's victory on his Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-RIOOO was Suzuk i's 59th AMA 5uperbike win, moving it out of a tie with Kawasaki and into second on the all-time MARCH 17,2004 • CYCLE NEWS manufacturers win list. Mladin averaged 113.9 mph for the 200 miles, a new record that was .1 of a mph faster than Duhamel's winning average from last year, In a local hote l room earlier in the week, Mladin and his band of me rry men researched everything they could find on past Dayton as, and they e nde d up concoc ting a strategy that would see them visit the pits three times for tires , a change-up from the normal two-stop strategy that most em ploy. What happened from there was simple: Mladin was consistently quick, those three pit stops were fast, and the three sets of fresh Dunlo p tires allowed him to run lap times tha t kept him at or near the front throughout the 200 miles. At the end he was some seven seconds clear of two men who went with the more orthodox plan of stopping just twice . Those two were Erion Honda 's Jake Zemke and American Honda 's Miguel Duhamel , the pair racing to the very end 40th Anniversary