Mat Mladin has been testing at Philip Island for the last few days along with a few of the World Superbike racers, including Troy Corser, and the results don’t look good, … for the AMA Superbike racers. Mladin is coming back from some off season surgery and even had a 160mph crash during testing and the end result is he was the fastest rider on the track. Faster than all of the WSB guys who were riding machines with more horsepower. Ouch.
Cycle News has been covering the goings on and Corser said he wasn’t using qualifiers, just regular race tires but Mladin said he didn’t use qualifiers either since they don’t have them in the AMA and it makes no sense to use them during the test.
Whatever the case, Mladin could have been excused for going a bit slower because of the surgery and crash but instead he just went out and set the fastest lap times. As I said, the AMA teams who will be meeting him shortly had better be on their best or we’ll just see a replay of last year.
Why didn’t Mladin ever move up to WSB or MotoGP?
Stephen Waits says
I’ll speculate.
I think he was overlooked. By the time he was putting it all together in the AMA, I don’t think he was interested. WSBK isn’t a consideration now – he wouldn’t see any point in doing that. He’s said before how strongly he believes in the AMA series; specifically, some comments he made when some of the WSBK Ducati boys came over for a single race (the year prior to Hodgson coming over permanently). He’s got a family now and I’m not sure if he’s up for MotoGP. It seems like a younger man’s sport.
Plus, he knows where he sits in AMA. He knows he can compete to win each year. He probably makes a *really* good chunk of change. And, maybe he’s got some allegiance to Suzuki too, and wouldn’t want to race for anyone but them — and doesn’t like their MGP situation?
I’d love to see him go over there and kick some tail. I’ll be very surprised if it ever happens.
aaron says
i think tires may have something to do with it, as wsbk runs spec pirellis. no tire wars, no complaints about your tires not comparing well against your rivals. just the need to see none of your tires blow up on tv. I think pirellis are overbuilt and understicky compared to what the ama guys run. ( though maladin did impress me with his times.)
Jeff Rittter says
As an avid fan of disliking the idea of Matt racing anywhere and one who is definitely looking forward for the smug, individual who as has a multitude of fans that he ignores, to leave racing or move on to something that is a challenge to him. ( Like that would every happen, Matt go somewhere that he isn’t dominate and risk losing more than winning) It pains me to say this but maybe we should take Matt’s view on this, he’s right on the comparision between Corser and himself, it’s difficult to do. It’s like comparing Rossi to Agostini.
In a posting on http://www.cyclenews.com, Corser is quoted as saying, “On race tires Mat (Mladin) was probably about half a second, or two or three tenths maybe, slower than me. On an average. He put on a qualifier and put in a 1:32.2 yesterday, but my times were done on a race tire. So I could probably get under that time on a qualifying tire.â€
Prior to the Phillip Island test, Mladin said that he wouldn’t be using qualifiers since he doesn’t use them in AMA Superbike racing.
“We don’t have Q’s in AMA and I’m not a fan of qualifying tires at all,†Doyle said. “They’re useless and actually probably f—ing dangerous for us to run in a place like Phillip Island when they don’t make any sense to us.â€
Mladin’s response was that “It doesn’t matter what Troy (Corser) says. The bottom line is if he wants to believe I use qualifying tires, that’s great. As I said from the first day of the test, the comparisons really can’t be made; their motorcycle, from an engine perspective, has actually got more horsepower than us. Their gearboxes are open, and also their cams are open, which in the AMA is not the case. Things like that, really, as far as comparing times between Troy and myself, really it’s a little bit of a ridiculous thing to do and it’s something I haven’t done at the test because I refuse to get involved with it. The fact that Troy said what he said was a little bit disappointing, because I’d expect more from a world champion than to say what he did. From my side of things, if Troy feels he needs to believe that, to feel good about himself, that’s fine.â€
Stephen Waits says
Hey Jeff, at least get his name right, would ya?
Anyway, Mat’s written his column over at soup, and he talks about several of these topics – why he doesn’t care about GP is basically as I speculated. He also addresses the whole PI Test/Corser thing.
I’ve not been a fan of Mat’s attitude in the past. But the recent years have seen at least a slight change for the positive. And, you simply can’t deny the guy’s talent, nor his crew’s.
And so what if he wants to dominate AMA? Who wouldn’t? That’s racing!