Peter Doyle has been Mat Mladin's crew chief for many years now, the Australian duo have enjoyed incredible success together on American soil.

This week Peter dropped us a line to let us know how their season has gone thus far and also comments on a few other things in the AMA paddock.

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As I mentioned last time we headed out for a 3-race stint in the last 4 weeks that took us to Road Atlanta in Georgia, Pikes Peak Colorado and Road America in Wisconsin. As you can imagine it’s been a pretty busy time for everyone and as you read this we are in Virginia for a 3-day test.

I have heard a lot of people in Australia whinge about doing the 1 trip a year to Perth for a road race or motocross, well if that’s a problem for them they shouldn’t come over here and race. We do around 7 Perth distance trips a year for racing and tests, and at the moment our Transporter has been on the road for 6 weeks and is not due back to the workshop for another 5 weeks. We get to fly back and forth so we’ve been racking up the frequent flyer miles recently which is a bit of a painful experience over here since Sept' 11 with all the security checks, I guess with 14 times the population and 20 times the amount of wankers it has to be done though.

Seriously though you go through all the security checks then you have 2 grandmothers sitting next to you on the plane eating their home made fruit salad with forks (which the cabin crew confiscated) so I’m not sure how good the security is working.

Road Atlanta

On to Atlanta in the south where the hill-billys come out and have a real good time, they speak so strange I have trouble understanding them. Atlanta is one of the best tracks we race on in the USA as far as layout goes, a little like Eastern Creek but with more elevation changes and a bit faster. They made some changes this year to make it safer but it received mixed reactions as to weather it made it safer or more dangerous.

Anyway Mat was on the pipe again and it looked like we were in for a good weekend until about halfway through race 1. Mat had come from 4th through to the lead and had opened up a 4 second gap. Coming down the back straight he had gone through the flat in top gear (around 270 KPH) sweeper and just sat up and grabbed the brakes when the rear tyre exploded, if your lucky enough to see the footage you’ll agree Mat did an incredible job to ride out the worst of it and only just fell over when the wall was getting close at about 30 KPH.

The bike wasn’t too badly damaged, in fact the tyre exploding did more damage to the bike than the actual tip over. So we saw our 20 odd point lead turn into a 10-point deficit. Suzuki still managed to win the race with Yatesy (Aaron Yates) putting in a good ride to win the race and take the lead in the championship. Mat came back strong in race 2 and hosed everyone, which was a consolation after missing out on an easy victory in the first race.

Pikes Peak

From Atlanta we went to Pikes Peak, which is up in the mountains at around 6000 feet so all the bikes run like turds, we estimate that we lose around 30 % of our power at this altitude.

Pikes is another dump they call a racetrack, it’s a small Nascar oval with an infield section, total lap time for Superbikes is 54 seconds and the race is 48 laps.

We had a little bit of controversy during qualifying when the AMA (the MA of the USA) decided with a couple of minutes to go in final qualifying that they were pulling Mats fastest time because they felt their electronic timing was incorrect! Not only did Mat not have a chance to go back out and try for the pole, the time they deleted was from Fridays qualifying after they had made it official 18 hours earlier. If there is 1 thing the Aussies over here have learnt since being here is that MA is a much better organized and consistent authority than the AMA, I know some people might find that hard to believe but it would only take you 1 race over here to find out.

Anyway we made sure they weren’t going to take away Mats last 3 championships and got on with it. The race turned out terrible for us, the rear tyre wore out just past the halfway point and Mat came in for a pit stop, the boys did a real good job and the stop was only about 6 seconds. Mat went back out in about 14th and got up to 9th within 3 laps when there was crash and the race was red flagged with about 10 laps to go, it could have worked good for us as the AMA don’t do combined time for red flag races (not that far advanced yet, although I have seen it done in some 3rd world countries), you just line up again in your finishing order and go. Unfortunately they decided to call the race and we were stuck with 9th. Eric Bostrom won from Roberts and Yates and the championship was all very close with 10 points over the top 3.

Road America

From the tiny oval at Pikes we moved on to the longest circuit we race on Road America. The best layout in states I feel, it's 6.5km around, lap times over 2 minutes and fast, our bikes reach top gear 2 to 3 times a lap with top speed just under 300kph. Mat was straight into there and was fastest in each session by around half a second. We had a few concerns with the rear tyre, as this circuit tends to tear the centre out of the tyre with all high-speed straights.

In the race though it wasn’t a problem, and it was a great race between Mat, DuHamel, Roberts and for a while Ben Bostrom. They all had a turn in the lead and at 1 stage when DuHamel and Roberts got a break on Mat it looked like we might have to settle for 3rd. Mat fought back though and passed Roberts on the second last lap and then DuHamel with half a lap to go, and set a new lap record on the last lap almost half a second under the qualifying time.

We went from hero to zero the following day when it pissed down rain and basically we had a shit of a day, Mat wasn’t comfortable in the wet at all and with a drying track we had to pit and change from wets to slicks, we were in 12th when Mat came in and 27th when he went back out with 7 laps to go, he climbed up to 10th at the finish and while no one was happy with that, at least we got good points and are only 1 point behind in the championship. Aaron finished a clear 2nd in the race and decided he would give the crowd something to watch, he was smoking up the tyre and hanging it out everywhere on the cool down lap when the rear tyre bit and high sided him, the result was 1 totalled factory GSXR1000 and a bunch of people in Suzuki team shirts not looking too happy. He was pretty quiet and apologetic to the boys so we hope he learned something?

As I mentioned we are in Virginia testing now and then we go to Brainerd for the next race. After that it’s of to Laguna where we have entered the World superbike races as well as the AMA race, a busy weekend that for sure will keep us out of the pub. I fill you in on the latest happenings after Laguna and let you know how all the other Aussies are getting on. The silly season is already underway over here so you can imagine the bullshit that’s going on.

Regards

PD

Mat Mladin and the 2003 GSX-R1000 look the ones to beat this year in American Superbike