Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA Superbike Champion Mat Mladin losing quite a bit there, then I knew 15 wasn't going to happen so I shut it down. The last lap I popped a couple of wheelies and ended up I I seconds out. "Yeah, it was good fun. It was good for me as a rider because I couldn't just relax and finish fifth at VIR. Because 5pies was there at the front with Aaron [Yates1 and there just weren't enough points to do that." Following Virginia, Mladin continued to worry about his clutch. Eventually he figured out the problem. It was Mat Mladin. "After Virginia I couldn't figure it out why it was so bad. Then going to Atlanta. I done some practice starts and this and that and they were perfect, but come race time I couldn't get off the line. And straight away, it told me it was a mental problem that I had. And that's just me. I will not risk a championship for the sake of winning a race. It just won't happen. To do 17 or 18 races and to risk a full year, a championship, just for the sake of looking good in one race, it won't happen. In Virginia and Atlanta it was just one of those things where I didn't want the clutch to be a problem and that led into more things, and in the end, it was just the worst starts I had in my life. I still won in Virginia. And in Atlanta on Sunday, with the clutch problem, if I wasn't fighting for the championship, I would've won that race too." As it was, he did what he had to win the title for Suzuki and further secure his place as the greatest rider in AMA Superbike history, a title he's likely to hold long into retirement. Retirement isn't on the horizon. At least not yet. Suzuki signed Mladin for three years, making him one of the highest paid road racers in the world. Valentino Rossi is the runaway leader with a reported $18 million a year. Mladin isn't in that league, but he will earn more than most, if not all, of Rossi's competitors. World Superbike riders aren't in the same league. After securing his sixth title, Mladin said he wanted to retire with three more. Which is why he's limping. He wants to be more fit when the season begins. He wants a better motorcycle. He wants better tires. He wants to be a better rider. All of which are certain. "Everything will be better," he said. "I'm going to have a year on the bike. The bike will be better. I've learned a lot of stuff this year that I can improve myself upon." Mladin underwent a series of conditioning tests last year that taught him what he needed to do to be better prepared for 2006. "I'll be in a lot better condition next year than I was last year," he said. "I learned some stuff this year about myself, and some stuff that I need to do, to make things better." The end result will allow him to train harder, longer. His September ankle surgery won't make much of a difference on the motorcycle. The difference will be in his training. Once his ankle heals, he'll be able to run again, something he hasn't done for three or four years. "I used to enjoy it," he said. "Just came to probably 44 JANUARY 4, 2006 • CYCLE NEWS three orfour years ago, where I couldn't really do it anymore. I could run one day, then it would take three or four days to get over the pain. That's when I started leaning a little bit more to getting on the bicycle. It'd be nice to go for a run." Mladin credits much of his success to the 2005 GSX-RIOOO. "We had a lot of pace on everybody this year, thanks to the bike," he said. "In the end, Spies was there in the championship, but he never really kept close to me in a race this year. He won at Fontana when we broke down. We had a lot of pace on those people this year, thanks to the new bike and the new bike fitting me so well. As soon as I threw a leg over the bike I knew that we were going to be in for a good year." The team will have a new fork for next year. Mladin tried them at Road Atlanta. "The amount of time I've done on them now, my words to my guys were 'They're no worse than what we've got and the lap times are the same Yeah, we can work with this.''' That's how he likes to rate things. "I don't come in and say they're heaps better here, and they're heaps better there. Because you don't get things in racing these days that are heaps better here, or heaps better there. Because you're looking for tenths." Eskil Suter, who designed Kawasaki's ZX-RR MotoGP bike, has been working with Suzuki on improving the clutch. Suter was at the November Fontana test, as was Mladin's crew chief, Peter Doyle, despite Mladin's absence. Halfway through the 200S season Mladin realized that he was suffering on corner entry. "I think I do a lot of things on the corner entry to stop the motorbike backing in that helps my lap time a lot," he admits. "But on the overall, there's certain corners on the racetracks that what I do, it doesn't need to be done and it actually affects what I do, especially in the very slow corners. So that's just something I need to get sorted out. I've learned a style of going into the turns that the whole backing in thing, to me, everyone thinks it's a clutch problem, and it is, and I can back it in with the best of them if I really want to. But it's slowing your lap time down. There's no doubt in my mind. I try to learn to do things differently to stop that, and I have in a way. I rarely back the bike in because, to me, it's slow. But it certainly affects me going into certain corners, especially slow corners. So I need to find a happy medium there, to try to get out of that a little bit." The corner where the problem arose was turn five, the first-gear left at the end of the second long straightaway, at Road America. "I used to be strong going in there. I could go under anybody there years ago, but I can't anymore." He admits that correcting it, is "going to take a while. It's going to take some testing. It's not something you can do in a race at all." The Superbike class will be stronger than it's been in years in 2006. Kawasaki is bringing the Hayden brothers, Tommy and Roger Lee. Neil Hodgson now has a year's experience, a new crew chief, and a new teammate, Ben Bostrom. Ducati will supply them with advanced electronics. American Honda has farmed off the Formula Xtreme battles to Erion Honda to allow Miguel Duhamel and Jake Zemke to concentrate on Superbike. "We're gearing ourselves to race Mat," Zemke said at the end of last year. "It's probably what they need to do," Mladin says. "I guess they figure if they can beat me, they're probably going to win the championship. Going by past history, that could be right. Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be. But gearing up to beat somebody and actually doing it are two different things. And knOWing how to do it, as well, are two very different things. It's easy to look good for a couple of races, but when you've got a motorcycle that's as strong as ours and a team that's as strong as mine, it's going to be hard for anyone to get on top. There's no doubt about that. I'm not saying that in the light that we're just too good for them, that's not the case at all. The case is that we have everything in line and now it's going to take someone to come along and do things better than us to get up on top." eN

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