Mladin Takes Road America Superpole
Henny Ray Abrams | June 5, 2009
Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Mat Mladin will start both races of the AMA Suzuki Superbike Doubleheader from the pole position after setting fast time in Friday’s Superpole session at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.Starting last of the top ten qualifiers, by virtue of his fast time in the earlier qualifying session, Mladin lapped the four-mile circuit in 2:13.218 mins., slower than he’d gone in qualifying, but still best by half a second.Mladin’s bike was down on top speed to some of his competitors, something he noticed during practice and qualifying.”It was a decent lap for us,” Mladin said. “Left a little bit out there, but it wasn’t too bad. And more important is to get things sorted out for tomorrow.”We’re definitely lacking speed this week. There’s a couple other bikes that have somehow picked up a lot of speed in the last month or so, straight line speed, so looks like it might be a rough and tumble race and we’ll see how it goes in the end.”Teammate Blake Young was second fastest in Superpole after qualifying third. The Wisconsinite improved his time by about .3 secs. in his return to racing. Young sat out the previous round at Infineon Raceway with hand injuries suffered at Barber Motorsports Park.”This is the favorite track on the circuit for me and it’s good to be back,” Young said. “Obviously, to have fans and friends and family here, but it’s good to be back on the motorcycle.”I’m really happy and it went really good for us. We moved up a stop. So, we’re just going to have to work on few more things for tomorrow morning’s warm-up session and be back at it.”Yamaha’s Josh Hayes crashed the Suzuki party by setting the third fastest time after having finished second in qualifying. Hayes was .6 secs. slower than he’d been in qualifying.National Guard Jordan Suzuki’s Geoff May will start from the end of the first row after setting the fourth fastest time.Yamaha’s Ben Bostrom leads off row two from Foremost Insurance Pegram Racing Ducati’s Larry Pegram, Jordan Suzuki’s Aaron Yates, and Corona Extra Honda’s Neil Hodgson.
Superpole:
1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 2:13.218
2. Blake Young (Suzuki) 2:13.738
3. Josh Hayes (Yamaha) 2:13.995
4. Geoff May (Suzuki) 2:14.280
5. Ben Bostrom (Yamaha) 2:14.471
6. Larry Pegram (Ducati) 2:14.481
7. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 2:15.121
8. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 2:15.303
9. Jake Holden (Honda) 2:15.970
10. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki) 2:16.050
Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor
Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.
