American SuperBike 2001 - Round 5/6 - Road America

Mat Mladin was not happy halfway through Friday’s AMA Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike qualifying session at Road America. His Yoshimura Suzuki GSXR750 had quit on the back section of the four-mile road course and he quickly had to find a ride back to the pits. It looked like his chance of a fourth-straight pole position was in jeopardy. But in typical Mladin fashion, he made it back to the pits, hopped on his backup bike and promptly went out and set a new motorcycle track record of two minutes, 9.068-seconds (111.569 mph) to earn the provisional pole for this weekend’s Superbike doubleheader at Elkhart Lake.

Mladin and fellow Australian Anthony Gobert, of Yamaha (who turned a 2:09.169), were the only riders able to turn a lap under last year’s track record of 2:09.425 set by Mladin.

Qualifying continues Saturday morning and the grid will then be set for both Saturday and Sunday’s Superbike finals.

Kawasaki’s Eric Bostrom (2:09.521) and Jamie Hacking of Suzuki (2:09.803) round out the provisional front-row starters.

“We had a little problem with our A bike,” said Mladin, who would not elaborate on what the problem was. “Fortunately I was able to catch a ride back to the pits and the team was able to get my B bike ready with just a few minutes left in the session.”

If Mladin wins the pole for this weekend’s races it will keep him perfect in qualifying this season. Leading up to Road America Mladin has won the pole and set a track record at all three prior events. He has a chance Saturday to become the all-time leading AMA Superbike pole winner. Mladin is currently tied with Doug Polen with 18-career AMA Superbike poles.