Rounds 2 -3
Ap r. 3 -4, 2004
AMA SUPERBIKE
_
AMA Chevrolet S uperbike Champions hip
By PAUL CARRUTHERS
PHOTOS BY HENNY RAy ABRAMS
n February 16, 1997, 25year-old Australian Mat
Mladin won his first-ever
AMA Superbike race .
beating a man named
Miguel Duhamel by 9.067 seconds at
Phoenix International Raceway in Chandler, Arizona. Mladin rode a Fast By Ferracci Ducati; Duhamel was aboard his
Honda RC45 . Who knew that seven
years and two months later. Mladin
wou ld surpass Duhamel as the all-time
leader in AMA Superbike victories, some
325 miles to the west at California
Speedway in Fontana, California?
After Saturday's first of two AMA
5uperbike Nationals at Fontana . the two
were tied with 26 victories. Duhamel 's
first victory had come on September 9,
1990 - six years before Mladin first set
foot on American soil. A day later and the
record was all Mladin's, the Yoshimura
Suzuki rider turning in a brilliant two-race
performance at California Speedway in
which he completely dominated the
weekend to score the 26th and 27th wins
of his AMAcareer.
Both races went to Mladin. and both
were easily won. the margin of victory
O
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CYCLE NEWS
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over nine seconds in both. The first was a
bit sloppy by Mladin standards, but it was
a win nonetheless. The second victory
was more Mladinlike, meticulous for 28
laps and seemingly effortless.
Second in both races went to Ducat i
Austin's Eric Bostrom. the only Michelinmounted factory rider in a class mostly
dominated by Dunlop . Bostrom fought
hard in both races, but he couldn't match
Mladin's pace . He knew coming in - based
on testing and past events here - that this
one would likely go to Mladin and his
Suzuki, but it still had to be disheartening .
Bostrom was faster and closer for the
majority of the second race , but he still
ended up losing out to his rival by 9.9 seconds, the Ducati suffering in traffic with a
gearbox that wasn't set up well enough to
allow him to knife through traffic effectively.
Third place over the weekend was
traded back and forth between American
Honda's Miguel Duhamel and Erion
Zemke. the two
Racing's Jake
CBR IOOORR-mounted riders swapping
the spot. with Duhamel getting third on
Saturday and Zemke taking the spot on
Sunday.
The next-best man over the course of
the weekend was privateer Geoff May,
the Floridian riding his Pirelli-shod Team
