Mladin Is Plenty Slick in Rain

Even with rain late in the first race of the Yamaha Superbike Challenge, AMA champion Mat Mladin gave a virtuoso performance of a two-wheel ballet on his factory Suzuki at close to 100 mph Saturday at California Speedway in Fontana.

The long-haired Australian not only won the Yamaha Dealers 100-kilometer race with a nine-second margin over Eric Bostrom, he moved into a tie with Miguel Duhamel for the most superbike victories with 26.

“Like I said the other day, records are made to the broken,” Mladin said as he accepted congratulations from Duhamel. “It was a little bit of an untidy race. I don’t know how much [the rain] slowed the track down, if it happened at all.”

The veteran Duhamel, in his 18th season as a professional racer, was third in the race but was never a factor. He did, however, provide fans with the only side-by-side racing excitement by swapping positions with Jake Zemke, a Honda rider from Paso Robles, time after time for third place late in the race.

Eric Bostrom, on a Ducati, finished second after his brother, Ben, who was riding a Honda, dropped out after falling on the 12th lap of the 28-lap race around the 21-turn, 2.63-mile infield road course.

“Basically, there were a couple of lappers in front of me,” Ben Bostrom said. “I was looking at them, and when they turned right, I turned in also and I ran into the curb.”

Mladin, who also won the season opener, the Daytona 200, took a commanding lead over Zemke in the points race, 75 to 59, closely followed by Duhamel with 58.

Seemingly unconcerned over the misty weather that turned into rain for the last five laps, Mladin averaged 95.1 mph for the 100 kilometers, close to his pole position speed of 97.689 set earlier in the day.

When the rain increased, AMA officials postponed the Formula Xtreme race until today. It will follow the Yamaha 100k, third round of the championship series. There will be four races today, starting with superstocks at noon, followed by supersport, superbikes and FX. All but the superbikes will be 60 kilometers.

Qualifying leaders for the support races were Ben Spies, superstock, 97.023 mph on a Suzuki; Jamie Hacking, supersport, 94.838 on a Yamaha and Zemke, Formula Xtreme, 94.376 on a Honda.

Michael Jordan attracted most of the attention before the main event as the retired NBA legend was on hand to encourage his young protege, Montez Stewart of Matteson, Ill. It didn’t help much, however, as the rookie rider -- who looks more like an NBA prospect at 6 feet 3 than a motorcycle racer -- qualified 33rd in superstock and 39th in supersport.

It was a big weekend for Suzuki as the Japanese manufacturer announced Friday that Ricky Carmichael, the most successful supercross rider in history, would switch from Honda to Suzuki in 2005.

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In the Supercross event at Pontiac, Mich., Yamaha’s Chad Reed won his ninth race of the season. Kawasaki’s James Stewart won the 125cc race.