Even though the actual winner of this year’s AMA Superbike championship is undecided, the team victory goes to Yoshimura Suzuki. Mat Mladin and Ben Spies (just six points apart as of this writing) will fight it out for the individual title over the final three races, but the Yoshimura Suzuki teammates have secured the eighth title in the last nine years for their team.
This type of domination is absolutely mind blowing. The AMA Superbike title is extremely prestigious, and multiple factories have thrown huge sums of money at their race teams attempting to secure the title — this year and in years past. With the exception of a single title earned by Honda (with Nicky Hayden) several years ago, it has been all Yoshimura Suzuki for nearly a decade.
No doubt the Suzukis have been good bikes, but Suzuki has not achieved anywhere near this level of success elsewhere (including WSB). The credit has to go, therefore, to the Yoshimura Suzuki team, and, to a great extent, its long-standing relationship with Mat Mladin (who has six of those titles, and possibly a seventh in a few weeks).
