With completely new 1000cc sports bikes released by Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki this year, some commentators predicted Suzuki’s reign at the top of the sportsbike world was over.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Not only did Suzuki totally dominate the six round, 15 race New Zealand Superbike Championship this past summer, the mighty GSX-R1000 also won the most important race in North America in March, the famous Daytona 200.
To add to the GSX-R1000 Suzuki’s record, Englishman John Reynolds also took an immediate lead in the British Superbike Championship in March.
Naturally the competition re-grouped for a counter-attack. Leading the charge in the United States were Honda CBR1000 riders Miguel Duhamel and Jake Zemke. But after another drubbing at the hands of Australian Mat Mladin, Honda is smarting.
To rub salt into the wounds, Mladin passed Duhamel in the American Motorcyclist Association record books after winning a Superbike double header at Fontana Raceway in California on April 3-4.
Mladin got the weekend rolling for Suzuki by putting his GSX-R1000 on pole position at Fontana with a lap time well under the track record, cutting a 1m 24.759s fastest lap. He was the only rider to break the 1m 25s barrier.
He then won the first race by a little over nine seconds from Ducati’s Eric Bostrom, lapping tail-enders up to ninth place. The next day he won race two by almost ten seconds.
Again Bostrom was second, leaving Honda men Duhamel and Zemke to scrabble for the remaining rostrum positions.
The brace of wins took Mladin’s tally to 27, propelling him into American Motorcyclist Association history as the rider with the greatest number of Superbike wins in the USA.
Not only that, he also tops the fastest qualifying list with a tally of 32 pole positions in AMA competition.
Afterwards, Mladin gave credit to Suzuki for building the GSX-R1000.
“The GSX-R1000 is such a well balanced motorcycle it is unbelievable. It gives a lot of feedback through the handlebars and seat,” he said.
He also praised tyre giant Dunlop for the huge effort it has put in since last year when the power of the Suzuki regularly overcame the best Dunlop could provide.
“Dunlop has worked hard since last year. They said they were going to work hard, and they did. The tyres are much better.”
Mladin also revealed that the AMA rules to handicap four cylinder engines in 2004 had knocked almost seven kilometres per hour in top speed off the Suzuki at Fontana to leave it 10 km/h down on the Ducati raced by Eric Bostrom.
But it wasn’t just in the Superbike class Suzuki’s GSX-R1000 dominated at Fontana. Suzuki also took out the Superstock class, with Ben Spies fastest in qualifying, then winning the race to tie for the championship points lead.
Across the Atlantic, Suzuki’s GSX-R1000 has been just as competitive.
While Mladin was winning at Fontana, Team Suzuki’s Stephane Chambon, Keiichi Kitagawa and Warwick Nowland stormed to victory in the opening round of the Masters of Endurance Championship at Le Mans, France.
The three members of the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team, (SERT), took command of the 27th annual event two hours before the finish on the their GSX-R1000 and remained ahead until the flag.
It was the third year running Suzuki’s GSX-R1000 has won Le Mans. This year the winning Suzuki clocked up 793 laps, or 4180 km, on its way to victory.
The Easter break provided no respite for rival manufacturers, with John Reynolds scoring 1-3 finishes in the British Superbike Championship on his Suzuki GSX-R1000. Reynold’s Brands Hatch results hoisted him into the lead in the highly competitive British series by one point over Honda’s Michael Rutter.
And in Holland, Frenchman Vincent Phillipe showed the Suzuki’s pace by topping qualifying for the opening round of the World Endurance Championship – the Assen 500 – on a Castrol-backed GSX-R1000 Suzuki.
His pole time was half a second better than the second placed Yamaha YZF-R1, and almost two seconds better than the previous year’s Assen pole time.
This is a reflection of the increased level of competition in the World Endurance Championship with the release of new motorcycles from Kawasaki, Yamaha and Honda.
In the race, the Castrol Suzuki team stormed to a sensational win, taking the chequered flag 28 seconds ahead of the second placed Yamaha after a long hard battle that saw the lead change many times. The lap record was lowered by nearly two seconds and in the end, victory again went to Suzuki and its potent GSX-R1000.
When Suzuki released the first GSX-R1000, its slogan was “Own the Racetrack!” Now, despite ever stronger competition, it still does.
