GixerGaz
31-01-2007, 17:31
http://www.gixerjunkies.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=7190&stc=1&d=1170261052
The season can’t start soon enough for Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin. The six-time AMA Superbike Champion showed up at California Speedway in slightly baggy leathers, the result of his off-season training program. There was also a hint of gauntness in his face, but he didn’t want to elaborate, other than in the context of preparation.
How much weight had he lost?
“Just a bit,” he said.
Is it part of getting ready? “
Getting ready. See what we can do.”
Is he looking forward to it?
“Yeah, absolutely, can’t wait. It’s going to be a good challenge.”
The challenge will be to wrest back the number-one plate from teammate Ben Spies. Towards the end of last season Mladin repeatedly acknowledged that complacency had set in, that he’d let one slip away.
“That won’t happen this year," he insisted once rain ended the day just past noon. "If I get beat this year then I got beat by a better rider and that’s it. Last year, and, again, not taking anything away from Ben [Spies]; he won the championship and he did an awesome job, but I left a bit out there. And this year if he wins again then I got beat by a better rider and that’s it. That’s the way it is.”
There were no more specifics about his training regimen, which has recently included intensive bicycling, or his diet, which he’s careful to monitor.
“I do a few things different, just getting ready, doing whatever we can. Just don’t want to leave anything on the table. Just want to give it my best. And at the end of 2007 if we get beat we can only be happy, because I know I gave it everything I had. That’s it. That’s all I had.”
This was Mladin's first extended test of the 2007 Suzuki GSX-R1000. He’d ridden it for three days at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia last November, but not in its current form. This week brings a wealth of new parts for this test, though the bike was already on the right path in Malaysia.
“I mean we were two seconds quicker in Malaysia than we’d been before, which was promising.”
Today his best was a hand-timed lap of 1:25.1 minutes on the rain-shortened first of two days of testing. There was so much to try that he was in and out of the pits constantly, his lap times and the sound of his machine varying somewhat. There were three mufflers to try, one of which was a howler. And the sound of the engine being cut by the traction control was audible on a number of corner exits.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said, a big smile lighting up his face, in “a very, very good way.”
His first exposure to proper traction control was at the Malaysia test, where he shared the track with a number of MotoGP teams, including Repsol Honda.
“I’m thinking, 'Geez, these things are electric.' Some of the slower ones are more around our pace, so I got to follow a few of them and I’m like, these bikes are electric. And I even seen Nicky [Hayden] out there and their times were probably, on average 2.5 to three seconds better than ours. So it’s easy to see someone for a lap when you’re only a few seconds off. So I got behind [Hayden] and had a bit of a look and I’m like, 'bloody hell, those things don’t move.' And now that we’ve got the system on the bike - it’s obviously not the same as theirs, but it’s some type of traction control system - I’m like, yeah, right, that’s why. So it makes a big difference.”
Mladin facetiously complained last year that his lap times weren’t improving radically because the traction control made his bike slower.
“It can, of course it can, no doubt about it. And that’s the whole idea of adjusting it, getting the adjustment right. That’s why it was always this big laugh. I always think back to Mid-Ohio when we heard that Honda had a traction control system now because it was legal, but they went backwards at the second Mid-Ohio from the first one.” That’s not entirely accurate.
American Honda’s Miguel Duhamel and Jake Zemke both went faster in the October race than they’d gone in July, but not by much. Part of that could be put to lack of practice during the October weekend fiasco. The point is clear; traction control is not the instant cure-all many think it to be.
“It’s a great system, but it’s not just put it on and there you go,” Mladin said. “It’s going to take a lot of tuning. And I would say for a little while it’s probably going to be do we do that or do we go this way. From a lap time standpoint, I think it’s going to take some tuning to get it right.”
Mladin and the rest of the factory teams, and a number of the support teams, conclude the two-day test on Wednesday
The season can’t start soon enough for Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin. The six-time AMA Superbike Champion showed up at California Speedway in slightly baggy leathers, the result of his off-season training program. There was also a hint of gauntness in his face, but he didn’t want to elaborate, other than in the context of preparation.
How much weight had he lost?
“Just a bit,” he said.
Is it part of getting ready? “
Getting ready. See what we can do.”
Is he looking forward to it?
“Yeah, absolutely, can’t wait. It’s going to be a good challenge.”
The challenge will be to wrest back the number-one plate from teammate Ben Spies. Towards the end of last season Mladin repeatedly acknowledged that complacency had set in, that he’d let one slip away.
“That won’t happen this year," he insisted once rain ended the day just past noon. "If I get beat this year then I got beat by a better rider and that’s it. Last year, and, again, not taking anything away from Ben [Spies]; he won the championship and he did an awesome job, but I left a bit out there. And this year if he wins again then I got beat by a better rider and that’s it. That’s the way it is.”
There were no more specifics about his training regimen, which has recently included intensive bicycling, or his diet, which he’s careful to monitor.
“I do a few things different, just getting ready, doing whatever we can. Just don’t want to leave anything on the table. Just want to give it my best. And at the end of 2007 if we get beat we can only be happy, because I know I gave it everything I had. That’s it. That’s all I had.”
This was Mladin's first extended test of the 2007 Suzuki GSX-R1000. He’d ridden it for three days at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia last November, but not in its current form. This week brings a wealth of new parts for this test, though the bike was already on the right path in Malaysia.
“I mean we were two seconds quicker in Malaysia than we’d been before, which was promising.”
Today his best was a hand-timed lap of 1:25.1 minutes on the rain-shortened first of two days of testing. There was so much to try that he was in and out of the pits constantly, his lap times and the sound of his machine varying somewhat. There were three mufflers to try, one of which was a howler. And the sound of the engine being cut by the traction control was audible on a number of corner exits.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said, a big smile lighting up his face, in “a very, very good way.”
His first exposure to proper traction control was at the Malaysia test, where he shared the track with a number of MotoGP teams, including Repsol Honda.
“I’m thinking, 'Geez, these things are electric.' Some of the slower ones are more around our pace, so I got to follow a few of them and I’m like, these bikes are electric. And I even seen Nicky [Hayden] out there and their times were probably, on average 2.5 to three seconds better than ours. So it’s easy to see someone for a lap when you’re only a few seconds off. So I got behind [Hayden] and had a bit of a look and I’m like, 'bloody hell, those things don’t move.' And now that we’ve got the system on the bike - it’s obviously not the same as theirs, but it’s some type of traction control system - I’m like, yeah, right, that’s why. So it makes a big difference.”
Mladin facetiously complained last year that his lap times weren’t improving radically because the traction control made his bike slower.
“It can, of course it can, no doubt about it. And that’s the whole idea of adjusting it, getting the adjustment right. That’s why it was always this big laugh. I always think back to Mid-Ohio when we heard that Honda had a traction control system now because it was legal, but they went backwards at the second Mid-Ohio from the first one.” That’s not entirely accurate.
American Honda’s Miguel Duhamel and Jake Zemke both went faster in the October race than they’d gone in July, but not by much. Part of that could be put to lack of practice during the October weekend fiasco. The point is clear; traction control is not the instant cure-all many think it to be.
“It’s a great system, but it’s not just put it on and there you go,” Mladin said. “It’s going to take a lot of tuning. And I would say for a little while it’s probably going to be do we do that or do we go this way. From a lap time standpoint, I think it’s going to take some tuning to get it right.”
Mladin and the rest of the factory teams, and a number of the support teams, conclude the two-day test on Wednesday