American SuperBike 2001 - Round 6 - Road America
| Fortunes changed for Australia's Mat Mladin today as he recovered from two crashes to finish seventh in a rain soaked round six of the 2001 AMA Chevy Trucks US Superbike Championship, held at Road America in Elkhart Lake Wisconsin.
The race win went to fellow Australian Anthony Gobert (Yamaha) who led home the Honda's of Miguel DuHamel and Nicky Hayden to score his second win of the season. Mladin's seventh place finish came a day after he secured his nineteenth career AMA pole position (the most ever won in AMA Superbike) before taking the win in the opening 16-lap SuperBike race in this weekend's `Double Header' national. During this morning's pre-race warm up, Mladin blasted his Team Yoshimura Suzuki around the Road America circuit under the lap record time he set on Friday. However as the scheduled race time arrived, the heavens had opened and the Superbike race was started under wet conditions. Two laps into the 16-lap race and Mladin lost the front end of his Suzuki and slid off the circuit while lying in fourth place. He was able to remount but without a visor on his helmet as it was ripped off in the fall. Two laps later and the defending American Champion was down again. This time at Turn six after the throttle stuck wide open in third gear. He escaped injury in both falls, but fortune shone on the Australia as the race was red flagged on the same lap that he crashed, allowing him to re=join the race on his spare bike as per AMA rules. Starting from the rear of the grid, he was able to work his way forward to finish seventh in the 12-lap restart. After six rounds of the championship, Mladin now holds a 36-point lead over Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom, who finished fifth in today's race. "Things were looking pretty good after the morning warm up when we set a great lap time, but when the rain started it was all different," said Mladin. "I made a mistake in the first part of the wet race and fell. I was able to get going again, but the throttle was sticking open and the bike was a handful to ride. I was lucky when I crashed the second time that the red flag was out on the same lap for a separate incident. From the restart we just did what we had to score as many points as we could. We arrived here holding a 26-point lead in the championship and are leaving with a 36-point gap, so that's got to be good considering what happened today." New Hampshire will host round seven of the 2001 AMA Chevy Trucks US Superbike Championship next weekend. |
MCNEWS.COM.AU