Six-time AMA Superbike Champion Mat Mladin will ride his Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 at the annual Dunlop tire test in December 2005 at Daytona International Speedway, but he will not ride a GSX-R600 in the Daytona 200 AMA Formula Xtreme race next March. In an online column he wrote in September, Mladin stated that he hoped not to test at Daytona this winter, that it did not make sense to him to test for three days at a track that only hosted one, 15-lap race. He instead hoped to test with his team privately at California Speedway in November, but his recovery from off-season surgery to his left ankle will force him to miss that date. “I will be at the Daytona test because I will not be attending the Fontana testing in November so my foot/ankle has more time to heal,” Mladin wrote in an e-mail to Roadracingworld.com October 31. “I was hoping to do the November testing, but we have decided I need more time. So I will be at Daytona to get some time on the bike.” In his e-mail, Mladin wrote that the 90-minute, September 9 procedure to repair bone fractures and remove floating bone fragments from his left ankle (injured in a crash during testing at Daytona in January 2005) and to repair old damage suffered in an ultra-light airplane crash in 1995 went well. He stated that he already has more range of motion than he has had since the airplane crash. Mladin is currently undergoing physical therapy in Australia and will continue physical therapy upon returning to the United States with Dr. Thomas Bryan, the orthopedic surgeon who performed Mladin’s surgery, at the Athletic Rehabilitation Center in Chino, California In his e-mail, Mladin also put an end to speculation on the Internet by stating that he will not ride a GSX-R600 in the Daytona 200 AMA Formula Xtreme race.