Mladin takes provisional win

From Virginia International Raceway

DANVILLE, VA – Mat Mladin added another notch in his near-perfect record at VIRginia International Raceway with his eighth consecutive victory at VIRginia International Raceway’s Suzuki Big Kahuna Nationals presented by Dunlop, RockStar and Makita AMA Superbike races on Sunday.

However, the win will not be official until AMA headquarters in Pickerington, OH completes an inspection of the crankshaft out of Mladin’s Rockstar Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000.

Results of the inspection will be released as soon as possible by the AMA. The parts from Mladin’s bike will be compared with the same parts from production bikes.

If the win stands, it will move Mladin to within only 18 points of his teammate Ben Spies, current points leader, but a healthy 121 points ahead of Denver, NC’s Jamie Hacking.

Sunday’s win is Mladin’s sixth in a row for the 2008 Superbike season, and carries his momentum in to the next race, where he is touted to tie Spies’ record of seven consecutive victories.

Mladin commented on the possibility of repeating his win at Road Atlanta and posting a new consecutive win streak record: “Obviously that would be great,” the Australian said. “Right now winning races is my priority and my goal in my racing career, to stack up as many as I can. If we go eight in a row, obviously that would be fantastic."

Following Mladin and Spies home was their teammate Tommy Hayden, making a clean sweep of the top three positions in both races for their team of Suzukis. Fourth went to Eric Bostrom, mounted on a Yamaha YZF-R1, followed in fifth by Miguel DuHamel on his Honda CBR1000RR.

The Supersport race went to Josh Hayes, mounted on his Erion Honda, ahead of the pair of Yamahas ridden by Ben Bostrom and Josh Herrin, with Blake Young and Jake Zemke finishing the top five.

In the AMA Superstock Series presented by Dynojet, Aaron Yates took the victory by nearly 10 seconds over Jake Holden, while Chris Peris, a privateer from Calgary was so stoked after his podium finish that the team almost drove off from the paddock without one of its awards.

“Broke guys do good,” was Chris’ comment when stopped to deliver the items. “This is the way racing should be. This place blows San Diego away.”

The Red Bull AMA U.S. Rookies Cup race started as scheduled in the morning, but a first lap crash that sent two riders to the hospital caused it to be delayed until the final event of the day.

Toriano Wilson, Luciano Ribodino and Garet Tomlinson were all involved in a crash that saw Ribodino taken to Duke Medical Center in Durham, NC and Ribodino taken to UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, NC, while Tomlinson escaped relatively uninjured.

Hayden Gillim took his second straight win, riding just a few days after mid-week surgery to repair a broken collarbone.

"I'm just really happy to get my second win. I didn't think I'd do well here with my broken collarbone but when we showed up and I went out and qualified third, I knew I had a chance."