The last time I wrote we were headed to Virginia for our second last meeting of the year hoping to consolidate Mat's lead in the championship. The weekend turned out pretty good for us considering the position Mat was in.

We were in a difficult position as we are down to the last 2 meetings and with the tyre problems we’ve had this year and how things were looking over practice, we went on the side of safety in the first race and ran the hard rear tyre that Dunlop had available, it definitely was not as fast as the other tyres we had allocated to us but we felt it would be safe over the race distance.

Every other rider ran the soft tyre and at about half race distance it looked like we might finish 6th. The last half of the race though everyone in front of us started to struggle with rear tyres and Mat got to the lead with 2 laps to go and won comfortably. The second race ended up taking 2 days to get through after someone’s oil drain plug came out and lubricated the track, the officials tried to fix it but by the time it came to the Superbike race a big storm came through and turned the oil and whatever they used to clean it into mud.

As the AMA do, we all came back and raced on Monday, even though there were very few spectators and no television crew there. Mat rode around and finished 5th and we left Virginia 1 point further ahead than when we got there. Kurtis Roberts won his first AMA Superbike race with no one to see it, bit of bad luck hey.

On to Barber and Mat only needed a couple of 12th places if Aaron Yates won both races.  Mat got the pole which gave him an extra point and then finished 5th in the first race which meant he only needed 23rd in race 2 to win. He finished 3rd in the end and wrapped up his 4th AMA Superbike championship which is the most by any rider in the history of this series.

It was a pretty tough year as Mat led the championship 3 times throughout the year, each time he got to the top we had some problems that were out of his and the teams control and we ended up chasing again. We gave away about 70 points that we shouldn’t have so it could have been over at Virginia. Anyway we all went out and had a few beers on Sunday and got a bit irregular and then suffered all day Monday flying home to California.

Everyone is in cruise mode at the shop at the moment with Mat not due to ride until the Daytona test in December. All the boys from this year, Henry, Johnny, Reg and myself are all coming back next year to see if we can’t help Mat do it again. Speaking of Johnny here’s an interesting story. He has been taking flying lessons for a while and has recently gone solo for the first time, one day he come into the shop with some aerial photos of the area where our workshop is, this might sound normal to you but he did this without having to show any identification. You would think after September 11 that a foreigner with near shaved head taking flying lessons and aerial photos might be a bit suss ! Anyway he hasn’t kamakazied our shop yet so rest of the USA should be OK.

We are currently working on making our bikes fit next years rules over here as we have to go back to standard throttle bodies and air boxes. This might slow us down bit initially but by the time we get to racing next year I think we’ll be OK.

Last week I was at Daytona for a tyre test with Aaron Yates and Ben Spies and there was an incident on the last day that really shows how that track and the AMA need to address the safety issues with that place. Just before the start finish line Ben had a rear tyre failure that made him crash just as he passed our team radar gun at 300 KPH. Ben was lucky to be low sided and slide for what must have felt miles, tearing skin off all over his body. Fortunately he didn’t break anything and will be ok with a few skin grafts and a lot of burn cream.

The problem we have is the powers to be continually want run a 200 mile race at this shit hole that was built for modified taxi cabs they call Nascar. AMA, and a few people obviously without any racing experience on some of the teams and boards over here, say that we just need to slow the bikes down, that is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard, I don’t see tyres exploding in Moto GP and WSB!

The people involved need to wake up and see that 600 supersport machines are chunking tyres at Daytona, I have seen Aaron Yates blister a DOT front tyre in 9 laps at Daytona. When are these people going to learn that Weight is one of the biggest issues with the current machines at Daytona (and a few other places), and why do they continue to try and make regulations suit crap racetracks.

They could also look at changing the format of the race, a couple of 100 mile races with a pit stop would go a long way to solving the ongoing tyre problems.  It still won’t solve the problems associated with the circuit though. If they think speed is the problem then we should be racing 500 cc twins with stock engines.

Anyway I’ll keep in touch over the off season and keep you all updated on the silly season over here.

PD

Mat Mladin and the 2003 GSX-R1000 - AMA Champions once again