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Written by:
Chris Martin
04/28/2008 - 01:03 AM
Fontana, CA
Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin and Ben Spies (Photo: Brian J Nelson) ยป More Photos
Ben Spies’ double victory at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA marked yet another landmark achievement in the 23-year-old Texan’s dizzying ascension up the all-time charts, tying the legendary Flyin’ Fred Merkel for third all time in AMA Superbike victories with 20.
Yes, that Fred Merkel -- the golden haired three-time AMA Superbike king who went onto claim the first two World Superbike titles. And Spies -- just five races into his fourth AMA Superbike campaign -- now sits just 12 behind Miguel DuHamel for second and is already leaving the likes of Nicky Hayden, Wayne Rainey, Freddie Spencer, and Eddie Lawson in his wake (of course his Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki teammate, Mat Mladin, leads by a wide margin with 66).
Perhaps even more importantly, Sunday’s nail-biter gives Spies a real signature victory over Mladin, ranking just a notch below his clutch Laguna Seca finale performance but likely above any of his 18 others.
This weekend also served notice that the Superbike championship is still very much a two-man affair, an assumption that was starting to come into question after the Australian had strung together nine wins in his last ten attempts dating back to the latter stages of 2007.
While Spies’ 0.011-second win may have ended up looking perfectly orchestrated, the Texan insisted that it was nothing more or less than his maximum over 28 laps that just happened by happy coincidence to be approximately 20 centimeters better than Mladin’s best on this day.
Watch the Last Lap of the Race
“The race didn’t exactly go how we would have liked,” Spies admitted. “We couldn’t match his pace. It was just that tenth here and half-tenth there that just kept eeking out and eeking out. I was trying as hard as I could and then I was about to be content with second and I saw him run wide with about 14 to go and I just put my head down and kept plugging away. Just when I thought we were going to make a little bit of a charge I got held up somebody through Turn 1 and lost almost a second that lap. Then I just kept my head down and saw another small mistake and just kept going and kept going and kept going.
“The gap with two to go… I just didn’t know if it was going to happen. When I saw ‘L1’ he had about half a second. I just kept pushing and pushing and got out there on the last lap. I was going to try in the same spot we did the day before but he got
The thrilling battle was also a bit of redemption for the Superbike class, which hasn’t always served up the closest racing in recent times. The weekend’s racing was incredibly tight with the Supersport race being decided by 0.080 seconds, Formula Xtreme by 0.013 seconds, and Superstock by 0.174 seconds. By contrast, Saturday’s Superbike race had a whopping 20.585-second gap from first to second. Sunday’s Superbike final was the closest dogfight of the entire weekend, however, with the minuscule 0.011-second photo finish.
The race was so close, Mladin joked that he allowed himself to believe that he had actually won for a few seconds. “I went through the first corner in denial pretending I had won -- ‘Wow, this feels great.’ Then I went, ‘Aww, you know what? He won.’ Nah, I pretty much knew straightaway that he had me. I felt him in the draft and I didn’t want to do anything silly. That’s just what the result was. That’s the way it goes.”
Spies explained how it is that after nearly 40 minutes of riding on the edge, the two can be so evenly matched. “There are some times when I’ll look at the data and I’m just laughing at it because it’s identical. I don’t know how I can do anything different or better. Maybe he does the same thing. It’s pretty funny if you actually look at our throttle traces and all that kind of stuff. It’s just like we’re the same. It gets a little bit hard at times but we both want to win and we’re trying our hardest, that’s for sure.”
The race was also the third in a row that the Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki squad swept the podium as Tommy Hayden has been showing very encouraging signs of adapting to his GSX-R1000 machinery. Unfortunately, the Kentuckian was delivered a serious blow a couple hours later when he was taken out in a Supersport race crash. And while the extent of his injuries is currently unknown, there is some concern they’re serious enough to put him on the shelf for some time while he recovers.
The AMA Superbike Championship picks back up again on May 16-18 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA.
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