American SuperBike 2001 - Final Round - Alton - Mladin Champion again
| Mat Mladin won his third
consecutive American AMA Superbike championship after finishing a strong,
but uncustomary, twelfth place in today's final round of the 2001 AMA
Chevy Trucks US Superbike Championship, held at the Virginia International
Raceway. Mladin becomes only the third rider in the history of the AMA Superbike Championship to have won three consecutive titles, joining Reg Pridmore (1976, `77, `78) and Fred Merkel (1984, `85, `86). He is also the second Australian to have won after Troy Corser's victory in 1994. "It's been a hard year, that's for sure," said 29-year-old Mladin. "It wasn't a perfect season as I did make a couple of mistakes, but the championship win was what we were after. This weekend wasn't about me winning the race today. It was winning the championship for the whole team, Suzuki, Yoshimura and all of the guys. I'm looking forward to heading back to Australia in the next few days for a break before returning next year to see if we can make it four championships in a row." Mladin arrived at the Virginia circuit holding a 16-point lead over Team Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom and stretched it to 17 at the end of qualifying after he took a record equalling ninth pole position for the season and the extra championship point. This also increased Mladin's record tally of AMA Superbike pole positions to 24. Mladin's preparation for today's event was disrupted when he fell during the morning warm up session and his Team Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R750 caught alight. He escaped injury but his number one machine suffered extensive damage and he was forced to use his spare bike for the race. "I was pushing pretty hard during the warm up, just to see how hard I could go, in case I had to in the race," added Mladin. "I pushed that bit too hard and lost the front and unfortunately the bike caught fire and was pretty badly burnt. My spare bike was set up the same as the race bike, but they still don't feel the same and it took a few laps to get used to it." Mladin's main attention during the 150km race was the position of Eric Bostrom. After dicing with the leaders early in the race, Bostrom ran wide and out of outright contention to eventually finish tenth, two places ahead of Mladin. With a total of 380 championship points, Mladin finished fifteen clear of Bostrom (365), with the pair followed by Nicky Hayden (340) and Doug Chandler (Team Kawasaki, 319). "I cruised around in the early laps just behind the leaders and was happy with the pace of the race. I saw Eric (Bostrom) run off the circuit on about lap 15 and stayed ahead of him until the pit stop. From there on I knew where he was and all I had to do was finish." Today's race win went to American Honda's Nicky Hayden, who edged out Australian Anthony Gobert (Team Yamaha) by 2.09 seconds at the conclusion of the 42-lap race. The win made it four consecutive wins for the Honda rider. Mladin became the third Australian rider to win a major international title in recent weeks joining Troy Bayliss (World Superbike Championship) and Andrew Pitt (World Supersport Championship).
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Results
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Standings
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Mat Mladin - racing achievements
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MCNEWS.COM.AU