AMA: Sevens are Wild for Mladin at Barber Motorsports Park
By Olaf Wolff Sr. Staff Writer
Not the looming threat of twisters, torrential rains, or other competitors, could put the kibosh on No.7 Mat Mladin winning his seventh consecutive victory on a rowdy weather day in central Alabama. Riding his Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000, Mladin extended his lead in the point standings, on track for his seventh career American Superbike championship. Mladin leads teammate Tommy Hayden by 77 points, 220-143, after seven of 20 rounds in the ‘09 championship.
The previous mark of seven was held by ex-teammate Ben Spies, whose streak ended when Mladin beat him in the second race at Road America last year. Is it safe to assume he will join Spies in shaking up the SBK at the end of the season?
Crazy weather forced the day's races to be delayed for two hours and shortened by five laps from 21 to 16. A band of severe storms swept through the area and tornado warnings were issued in the early afternoon. Mladin needed just one lap though before passing early leader Josh Hayes (Yamaha) on lap two and streaking into the lead.
Mladin was widening the gap when the safety car was called so an ambulance carrying teammate, Blake Young, could cross the track ending the fifth lap. Young crashed exiting turn five on the second lap, but walked away with only minor injuries.
Starting from the pole in both races, Mladin surrendered the lead heading into the first turn on Sunday. A lap-and-a-half later the Australian muscled past leader Josh Hayes in Turn 5 and led the rest the way en route to a 2.745-second victory over Aaron Yates. It was Mladin's 79th career AMA Pro victory and moved him to within seven of Miguel Duhamel's record of 86 career wins.
"I've had seven in a row, and obviously nobody has had any more than seven before so we'll see if we can go to Infineon and get another one," said Mladin. "The bike worked great today, we found some stuff out this morning in the warm up. I'm pretty happy with the bike. We definitely made some progress this week."
The second place podium position was the best of the season for Yates (Suzuki).
"It's been an up-and-down year for us," said Yates. "We got the '09 Suzuki a couple of weeks ago, did some riding on it and got a few things sorted out. It really feels good to get up here, back on the podium . . .”
Less then twenty-four hours after earning his first AMA Pro American Superbike podium of the season with a third-place run on Saturday, Ben Bostrom (Yahama) repeated his performance Sunday, by passing teammate Hayes on the 14th lap in turn five. It appears turn five saw a plethora of action all weekend.
"The boys are doing a great job," said Bostrom. "They definitely built a winning bike today and the rider didn't put it all together. We were hoping to move up the ladder one step today and Aaron just beat us to it. That's all right, we have more races to go."
1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki)
2. Aaron Yates (Suzuki)
3. Ben Bostrom (Yamaha)
