Spies On Infineon Superbike Pole; Mladin goes down and in second!

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Rockstar Makita Suzuki's Ben Spies has taken provisional pole for this weekend's two AMA Superbike Championship races at Infineon Raceway in California from team mate Mat Mladin.

In an exciting 40 minute session, held in the 103 degrees, Mladin crashed early in the session in the final turn but then took over the top spot as soon as he got back up to speed.

His best was a lap of 1:35.840 was well off the unofficial 1:34.76 Mladin ran during a recent test here, but missed the April 3 test while recovering from surgery.

Said Spies: "We went out this morning and I just decided, hey, let's put our head down these first couple of laps. And usually you try to work into things and take it lap by lap and get used to everything. But here, we obviously didn't get to test here, and I was a little worried about that. But we just tested last week in Salt Lake (Miller Motorsports Park).

"It's the first time we've had these forks on the bike. The bike was here last year, but it was a different set-up. The bike's working good. I'd say it's in the ballpark of being where I want it to race. Usually you're trying to find stuff and you're really trying to make it happen. But here the bike's working pretty well and right now we could go out and race it and I'd feel comfortable on it. It's not perfect; it never is perfect, but it's not super-great. But it's there."

Mladin won both races here this year easily and it's a track he likes and does well at. He's won seven of the last 10 races at Infineon.

He said: "On this track, the harder you ride the bike, the faster you go."

Superbike Qualifying:
1. Ben Spies (Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:35.840
2. Mat Mladin (Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:36.423
3. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 1:36.601
4. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 1:36.655
5. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 1:37.048
6. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 1:37.204
7. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 1:37.338
8. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 1:37.643
9. Matt Lynn (Honda) 1:37.874
10. Geoff May (Suzuki) 1:37.892