With the exception of his DNF in Saturday’s race at California Speedway in Fontana, Mat Mladin has entirely dominated the 2005 AMA Superbike Championship. Winning every other race by a wide margin, Mladin has basically demolished the competition.
The closest competition for the defending champ has come from his own team, and from former World Superbike champion Neil Hodgson on the Ducati 999. However, it seems that none of these racers can match Mladin’s blistering pace, as he regularly pulls away from them by close to a second each lap.
While Mladin’s domination is of course a demonstration of his incredible skill as a racer, it is also due at least in part to the superiority of the new 2005 GSX-R1000.
While American Honda struggles with the task of developing their own superbike without HRC help (witness recent negative comments by Kurtis Roberts in Cycle News), and Ducati’s 999 stays in basically the same place (the place where you are down 10-20 horsepower on your four-cylinder competitors), Yoshimura Suzuki has come out swinging with the 2005 GSX-R1000 program. With an already impressive starting point (look for a full review of the 2005 GSX-R1000 on MD soon), it seems that Yosh didn’t have too far to go to develop a competitive setup. This despite the fact that the Suzuki was all-new for 2005 while the Honda is basically the same as last season’s machine.
Therein lies the scary part – or at least it should be scaring Suzuki’s competitors. With 4 months left before the season finale at Road Atlanta, the Suzuki is likely to continue improving. Since Yoshimura’s pace of developement seems to be much faster than that of their competitors, it is reasonable to expect that the gap in performance between the Suzuki and the competition will grow ever wider as the season progresses.
Can American Honda get their superbike program back on track in time to challenge the Yoshimura riders for wins? Or will it be the Ducatis that bring the challenge, possibly picking up some much-needed horsepower by means of extra help from the Ducati factory? Whatever happens, we hope that someone can challenge Mladin soon, before this season turns into the AMA Suzuki championship!
