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Rounds 6-7 May 14-15, 2005 AMA SUPERBIKE oshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin had another perfect weekend: He got pole position, the lap record, led all laps, and came away with two wins, 75 points and $8000 dollars. The challenge was not winning, but rather by how much he could win. On Saturday, Mladin chose too soft a tire and still won by nearly 10 seconds. With the harder tire on Sunday, Mladin challenged himself to stretch out a IS-second lead. He came within .226 and ended at 13.024. "It was a good weekend for us," Mladin said, understating his accomplishment after completing the weekend sweep with Sunday's win. "The GSXRI000 is again unbelievable. It just works so well. For that race, we just kept pushing all the way to the end." The double victory gave Mladin six wins in seven tries and puts him back on top of the championship standings. Sunday's success extended his all-time wins record to 38, six more than American Honda's Miguel Duhamel. So complete is his domination that his rivals can't hide their admiration. "It gets to you when you see somebody able to just drive away like that," Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates said after the first of his two runner-up finishes. "You wonder what's the difference, because we're pushing hard." "Really frustrating," Ducati Austin's Neil Hodgson said after coming third in Saturday's race. "I sort of can't hang with him, and I'll crash trying, and then I'll be even more annoyed with myself. Seeing him pull away is very frustrating. At the moment, there's not a lot I can do. So I'm just trying to keep pushing as hard as I can." Even Mladin knew he was trying too hard. When Saturday's race was redflagged on the third lap, Mladin was into the chicane with a six-second lead. That wasn't necessary, he realized, so he didn't take as many chances on the restart. Still, he was able to ease away to a 14-second lead before backing off to win by 9.968. ':After the first one I was thinking that's a bit silly getting away that far," he said, "because taking that many risks, I thought there'd be some low [I :37s] being run and might pull away a second a lap. But when I came in, I noticed the second- Y ~ AMA Superbike Series fastest lap was like a 38.5, so I didn't do anything quite as silly on the second restart." Hodgson was second from the start, while Yates was working his way forward. From seventh on lap one, Yates worked his way to the front, landing behind Hodgson on lap eight. The gap was about 3.7 seconds and soon to come down. Fifteen laps on and Yates was in place to make the pass, which he did. "He was kind of my carrot out there, and I was the rabbit chasing him and just did what I could," Yates said. "I knew I had pretty good grip on the side of the tire, and I was close enough, and I just turned the ~ on and just shot right up there to the inside of him, kind of blocked him out for turn 10." Hodgson was struggling with rear grip at the time and said later, "I thought whoever was chasing me had a probably a lot more grip to me. And then Aaron [Yates] came past, and he definitely did." Yoshimura Suzuki's Ben Spies was slow getting to fourth, his struggle coming from what he believed was a defective rear tire. Spies chose the hardest of the Dunlop rears, while Mladin, Hodgson and Yates all used the softest, a 3133. With no traction as the race progressed, Spies said, "I just basically rode around at 60 percent the whole end of the race." Dunlop road race manager Jim Allen said that Spies was "at the opposite end of the spectrum from the other guys. I think if he had a problem, I think it was because he was on a hard compound." Spies finished nearly 44 seconds back, and there wasn't much racing behind him. Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes was fifth, with Michael Jordan Motorsports Suzuki's Steve Rapp sixth on the Superstock-spec GSX-RIOOO. Rapp's sixth was his best of the year, as was the seventh of Lion Racing's Jake Holden, also on a Superstock machine, though less highly modified. Trianglecycles.com's Larry Pegram was eighth, Mat Mladin Motorsports' Marty Craggill ninth, and Ducati Austin's Eric Bostrom was 10th. Bostrom was one of three riders Duhamel and his American Honda teammate Jake Zemke were the other two who suffered excessive rear tire wear. Duhamel and Zemke both pitted to 20 MAY 25,2005 • CYCLE NEWS change rears. Duhamel finished 25th, Zemke 20th. "We had three tires with very coarse abrasion," Allen said, adding that it was the same 3133 designated tire that swept the podium. "Right now, we're not sure what the story is." Allen added that there'd been no hint of problems in practice. "We're a little mystified right now," he said. Mladin switched to the harder end of the spectrum on Sunday. "I just felt with the way the conditions were today and what we learned yesterday, the tire that we used yesterday wasn't the right tire," he said. "I think if we went with the harder tire yesterday, we would've been even faster over a longer period of time than what we were. So a little bit of wrong choice yesterday, we from the end. Then he hit lappers and the quest was over. "That's just the way it goes," he said. "It was a good race for us, and we're really happy with the points and can't wait for Colorado next week, because it's been a bad track for me, and we plan on turning that around." Mladin left for Colorado having reclaimed the points lead. With seven of 17 rounds run, he has 227 to Spies' 211. Yates is third at 207. While Mladin was pulling away, Yates and Spies were fighting over second. Yates held the spot from the start to lap nine, then it was the young Texan for eight laps before Yates took it back on the 17th lap. "You could tell he was having to let off, and it was killing his drive," Yates said. "I saw a chance to put a move on him and got away with it, obviously, and today we chose the right tire. It was great. I mean, the tire hooked up for the whole race and worked really, really well." The challenge to stretch a IS-second lead motivated Mladin to disappear. The lead was over I I seconds at the midpoint and nearly 15 (14.774 seconds) three laps get by him, and I went for it." The pass came in the hairpin right that leads onto the front straight. Yates gapped Spies by half a second, with Spies unable to gain it back. "With three to go, I decided to put my head down and got close to him but just couldn't get around him," Spies said.