Q- Is it nice to be home?

Mat- "It is great to be home for sure, I tried really hard to be able to do this race, but with out last AMA race only a few days ago it just couldn’t be done. If everything ran smoothly then we may have been able to make it but with no testing and just getting home we just couldn’t get it done."

Q- Has anything ran smoothly this year for you?

Mat- "It has been a tough year, we jumped off it at the first race on the Friday, has some surgery on the Friday night but unfortunately we just couldn’t do it on Sunday and things just went downhill from there. We will have to just go get them next year."

Q- The bike seemed to actually be working last weekend from your comments, was that the first time all year?

Mat- "Pretty much, we got some new suspension stuff, we had been complaining all year about suspension. But you could say they held out on us. For the last race we had some new stuff to try, which was the stuff we needed all year. Unfortunately the people that won the championship had it all year. That is racing as they say, and the politics of racing. I guess they weren’t happy with us winning 3 years in a row, and I guess they did something about it."

Q- Things have changed a lot in motorcycle racing at home. The Xtreme series has taken off and the racing has strengthened from there. What do you think of the local scene, as you look at the speeds and the presentation of teams etc?

Mat- "Every time I read through a magazine or see a picture there seems to be 40 motorcycles on the track, and that has got to be healthy, it is good to see. Hopefully we can get things rolling enough so the good riders can race each other every race weekend, when that can happen then the series will become stronger again. The way the current rules are I think more people are going to come on to the track as a privateer, as they can afford to put a good race bike together. It should become healthy, and I certainly hope it does because then we can find some more young talent and send some guys overseas to fly the Australian flag, wherever that may be."

Q- You will be racing at the next FX meeting, up against guys that are going very strongly and racing hard. How do you think you will go, you are almost on a loser really each way it ends as I guess, people will say ‘The champ is back and why has he been beaten’, but if you do beat them, then people will say, 'Well he should have beaten them anyway'.

Mat- "That is not the way to look at it though, I hope a few of the young guys can step up and push things hard, and show people just how strong our racing is here, and how good our riders are. Whether I am on a loser or not, is not the way I look at it.  I have come back to have some fun and it will be good to put our own little program together, carrying the Mat Mladin motorcycles banner and the Yoshimura banner, we are just looking forward to the races. By no means do I believe we are going to go out there and win the race easily, I don’t think it is going to happen. These guys are competitive and they ride hard, by no means should nobody turn up because they think I am going to walk away with the races, I just don’t think it will be the case. Nowhere in the world is racing easy, where ever you are or what kind of bikes you are on, you have to race hard and ride well to win any race, that is what I am looking forward to doing. We will just put our best effort in and see what these guys have got."

Q- How will it compare with the US scene? In regards to the bikes, the riders, the safety of the tracks etc.

Mat- "It is always hard to compare, it has been an argument you hear ever year between the Australian riders, the American riders, the World SuperBike guys, the English riders etc. It is so hard to compare as most of the time you are on different machinery. A case in point is what the World SuperBike Corona Suzuka rider Lavilla said about us in America, he stated that we (Yoshi Suzuki in the US) were only winning races because we had no competition.  But then he came to America and lapped 1.5 seconds slower on his bike, than myself and my team-mate were lapping on our Suzukis. Does that mean that if we went to World SuperBike we would win championships, probably not, in the world championships unless you are on a v-twin you might as well not be there. Comparisons are impossible. You have to be on the same track in the same series, same tyres and everything else, so again comparisons are impossible."

Q- When did you know during the year that you had been nobbled, and that you had no chance of winning the championship.

Mat- "After Daytona when I crashed, we were still in go mode, we had 36 points to catch up but that was not a huge worry as we had led the championship by 50 or 60 points before in previous years so it was not something that we didn’t think we could do. But we certainly had a sneaking suspicion that the suspension problems didn’t look to be getting sorted out in a hurry. We tried ourselves to cure the problems but it just didn’t happen. Then halfway through the season things were certainly looking grim and we sort of just tried to learn as much as we could and looked to next year, and gained plenty of data with a vision to next year."

As a 20-year-old, Mladin raced in the World 500cc Grand Prix for the Cagiva factory team in 1993, almost ten years later, Mladin is still eyeing a return to the Grand Prix, either as a Wild Card entrant, or on a full time basis.

“I’d love to go back to the Grand Prix, but unfortunately with the way things are over there at the moment, I'd like to be paid to race rather than pay someone to let me race in their team, but it's just one of those things.

“I am hopeful of scoring a ‘wild card’ ride at this year Australian MotoGP in October. Suzuki America have requested to the Suzuki Grand Prix team to let me ride for the Suzuki GP team. It would be great to be on the new four-stroke MotoGP bike and see what happens.

“Two and a half years ago I rode the Suzuki 500 down at Phillip Island in a test and did a day and a half on it and certainly since then the itch has become more and hopefully one day it might happen.

"I feel that I have a few more years racing in me, especially if I can have a different goal and it's something different to achieve than just racing the AMA Superbikes for the next five years. I'm sure that if something else came up I could do it. I've maintained my training because if the Grand Prix thing comes off in two and a half months from now, I've got to be in great condition for that."

Even though Mladin still has a year to run on his Suzuki contract, he is looking ahead and to what he can put back into the sport here in Australia.

“I have small plans at this stage but I don't want to build something up and then not have something happen. I'd certainly love to try and have a rider out there and start doing a bit in the way of a team. This is what I know and this is what I love to do, and one day I'll finish racing and might come home a do a little racing myself. Hopefully I’ll have a couple of guys racing in a series out here either next year or in the next few years. The profile of the sport is lifting and I would like to be able to bring some sponsors into the series and I’m just looking forward to many on and off track challenger ahead.”

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