AMA SBK - Spies/Mladin Battle Set for World Stage in Monterey -ozzy go- speedtvcom

The Ben Spies/Mat Mladin AMA Superbike rivalry is the best in
the series in 20 years. Now the battle between the top two road
racers in the American championship will be shared by an
international crowd at The Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix, a combined
MotoGP and AMA Superbike Championship event held on July 20-
22, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif.

Last year Spies, of Longview, Texas, ended the longtime
dominance of his Yoshimura Suzuki teammate Mladin by beating
the six-time AMA Superbike champion from Australia for the 2006
title. Mladin vowed to return strong this year, and good to his
word, the 35-year-old Mladin has given Spies, who turned 23 on
July 11, a serious run for his money.

Mladin had tire problems at the season opener in Daytona,
crashed and still finished 10th. The gritty Aussie fought back and
after winning three races in a row he drew into a tie with Spies in
the standings at mid-season. Spies responded and coming into
Laguna Seca has a three-race winning streak of his own, opening
an 18-point gap over Mladin after 11 of 19 rounds. A race win is
worth 36 points so an 18-point advantage means the two are
running nearly neck-and-neck with eight races remaining.

Spies is the defending winner at Laguna Seca and he is brimming
with confidence and ready to show the massive crowd and the GP
team managers at the Red Bull MotoGP/AMA weekend that he’s
ready to make the step to MotoGP racing if he decides to go that
direction in the future.

“I needed to step up my game to respond to Mat, who definitely
raised his level this year,” Spies said. “I got the momentum back
on my side, but I can’t rest. I want to go to Laguna and keep this
thing rolling. It’s going to be an important race and naturally you
want to show your best at the biggest race weekend we have in
this country.”

Mladin will be eager to bounce back strong after crashing in the
most recent round last month in Utah. To illustrate just how
determined Mladin is, he nearly pulled off a podium finish after
the crash. The race was red flagged and his team scrambled to
get his damaged Suzuki repaired for the restart. In spite of
suffering a violent high-side crash, Mladin was able to salvage
fourth place in the race to minimize the championship points
damage. click on ozzy go to the full story on SPEEDtv.com