From a press release issued by Mat Mladin’s publicist, Steve Reeves:

2003 AMA Chevy Trucks US Superbike Championship
Round 1 – Daytona 200, Daytona International Speedway, Florida
Opening Practice Sessions Report

MLADIN SECOND FASTEST AT DAYTONA ABOARD NEW SUZUKI

Daytona Beach, Florida, USA–The opening practice
sessions for this weekend’s Daytona 200 got underway today, with Australia’s Mat Mladin posting the second fastest time aboard his Team Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000.

Mladin, a two times winner of the Daytona 200 and three times American Superbike champion, set a time of 1-min 49.4.13-secs to be fractionally slower than Kurtis Roberts (Erion Honda) who set the fastest time of the day with a 1:49.314 in the first of today’s two practice sessions.

The lead pair were the only riders to dip into the 1:49 time bracket, with four other riders including the American Honda pair of Miguel DuHamel and Ben Bostrom, along with Mladin’s Team Yoshimura Suzuki teammates Aaron Yates and Ben Spies, posting times in the 1:50 bracket.

“First day on the racetrack and that sort of thing, there is a bit of work to do on the bike to make things better and there is a lot of improvement to come over the next couple of days.” said Mladin. “Being a brand new bike for this year, we had it here at the test in December, but honestly the bike is very different now to what it was then, so we are starting fresh again in a way.”

A factor that will be new for tomorrow’s opening qualifying sessions is that the teams will not be able to use soft qualifying tyres. Chief tyre supplier to the teams, Dunlop, has announced that they will not be producing the purpose built soft qualifying tyres for this season with competitors left to complete their qualifying sessions on ‘race’ tyres.

“From what I understand, there is a gentlemen’s agreement between the teams not to use the softer qualifying tyres, because Dunlop have decided they are not going to use them this year, but some teams have some in their trucks, so we’ll just have to wait and see if everyone sticks to the agreement,” Mladin added with regards to the tyre situation. “If everyone has to use a race tyre and everyone does use a race tyre we are all in the same boat, but unfortunately some people can’t help themselves.”

The qualifying format for Sunday’s 57-lap Daytona 200 will see the top four places including pole position being decided in Thursday’s sessions, with the remainder of the grid positions being determined by the completion of Friday’s qualifying sessions.