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Mladin, the 28-year-old Australian who won the American Motorcyclists Association (AMA) Superbike Championship on a Suzuki GSX-R750 last year, took out the prestigious Daytona 200 mile race in Florida on March 12 in an incredibly tight tussle with Honda rider Nicky Hayden.
In winning by just eleven one hundredths of a second, Mladin reversed the position he finished last year when he was beaten to the finish line by Honda’s Miguel DuHamel on the RC45 750cc V4 by half a bike length.
This year Mladin used the superior power of his Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R750 to strafe past Nicky Hayden in the run to the chequered flag. Hayden was racing the all-new 996cc VTR1000 SP-1 Honda V-twin while Mladin was racing an upgraded version of the 1999 model Suzuki he used to win last year’s AMA Superbike Championship.
Suzuki has a completely new GSX-R750 on the way but Mladin will continue to campaign the older version until the new bike is fully developed.
Mladin’s victory was the second closest finish in the history of the Daytona 200, America’s most prestigious motorcycle race.
“It’s great to win it,” said Mladin as he took his place on the winner’s podium. “I’ve got an AMA Championship and now I’ve got Daytona. It’s good to win it because it is America’s biggest race. Hopefully we can win a few more before I retire.”
Mladin qualified the fuel-injected GSX-R750 a very close second for the 200-mile race and was always at or near the front, helped by the quick work of the Yoshimura Suzuki crew.
The Daytona 200 is the only American Motorcyclist Association Superbike race that sees riders pitting to refuel their motorcycles and make tyre changes.
Like last year when DuHamel beat him by a scant 0.014 seconds, this year’s race came down to the final lap with Mladin emerging on top in a scintillating finish over 18-year-old Nicky Hayden with the margin of victory just 0.011 seconds.
“I looked at that yellow line,” the finish line, “and all I could see was Nicky’s wheel and that yellow line and I knew we got it.”
The victory was the first for Suzuki since Kevin Schwantz, Suzuki’s former World 500cc GP Champion, won it on a GSX-R750 in 1988. Schwantz returned to the team as an advisor this year and cheered on Mladin from the pit lane of Daytona International Speedway.
“It was great to see him win,” Schwantz said. “I think Mat rode a smart race. He said he realised he couldn’t get away from those guys so he was just going to have to try and do what they did to him last year (when he finished second). He just elaborated on how fast the bike felt. So maybe he had a little more horsepower this year.”
As far as his advisory role, Schwantz said “To come back and help them and have the team win is pretty cool.”
Another Suzuki veteran who shared in the victory was Yoshimura Suzuki Team Manager Don Sakakura who has been with the Yoshimura team for 20 years and was the Team Manager when Kevin Schwantz won in 1988.
“It’s been a long time for Suzuki,” Sakakura said. “We were strong all week, really. We had a good setting coming in on Thursday and I just can’t say enough about Mat. He did a hell of a job for us. Very, very consistent. He knows what it takes to win here now. Over the year he’s learned a lot, we’ve learned as well. It’s a good combination.”
Sakakura said a vigorous off-season testing programme provided them with the data they needed to build a motorcycle to handle the high banks of Daytona.
“We made some geometry suspension changes that obviously worked out fairly well for us this week,” Sakakura said. “We were here in December and we did quite a bit of testing. The engineers on the team did some simulated heavy g-load testing and the Showa engineers helped us out a lot.”
The Daytona 200 win is the latest in a long list of victories for Suzuki’s class-leading GSX-R750 and follows on from its victory in the 1999 World Endurance Championship, the AMA Superbike Championship and the World Superstock Series.
Contact your Suzuki dealer to get the road version of the GSX-R750 superbike:
Phil Turnbull Motorcycles
Ingram & Worsley
Red Baron
