Texan takes third consecutive title Sept. 7, 2008 Ben Spies has won the 2008 AMA Superbike Championship. It marks the third year in a row the 24-year-old rider from Dallas, Texas, has won the AMA Superbike crown. Spies becomes only the fourth rider in the history of the series to win the title three consecutive times. Spies originally expected to be crowned in final race of the season on Sept. 28 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, where he needed to finish only 19th or better to wrap up the title. However, AMA Pro Racing announced Friday that it denied the appeal of Rockstar Makita Suzuki teammate Mat Mladin after being disqualified from both races at Virginia International Raceway in August for an illegal crankshaft according to AMA Pro Racing. That decision gave Spies an insurmountable points lead over his teammate and sealed the title for 2008. “Obviously this is not the ideal way for me to clinch the championship,” said Spies, who set a new AMA Superbike record of seven straight wins this summer. “Still, I’m happy for my crew who worked their butts off this year. It was a great season. We overcame a lot to win the title. I’ve won it just about every way imaginable now.” Regardless of infractions or appeal results, Spies was in a nearly unbeatable position going into Laguna Seca. He needed only a 19th-place finish to wrap up the title. He has never finished worse than 11th since coming fulltime to AMA Superbike competition. Spies has a career rate of over a 90 percent podium finishes, the highest by any rider in the history of AMA Superbike. By comparison Eddie Lawson is second all-time in career AMA Superbike podium percentage of 77 percent. Spies is coming off one of his best performances of his career at Road Atlanta last weekend, where he earned a dramatic come-from-behind victory in Sunday’s race. He also overcame adversity this summer. After having precautionary appendectomy surgery in July, Spies returned to race only a week and half later and was still able to win the pole for Mid-Ohio. He continued to race through his recovery all the time staying focused on the goal of winning his third AMA Superbike title. Going into the series finale Spies has ten victories, pushing his career total to 28 Superbike wins. This season Spies passed Fred Merkel to take over third on the all-time AMA Superbike wins list. In addition Spies won the pole at all but two of the rounds this season, passing Freddie Spencer and Doug Polen in career poles. Since coming into the series Spies has won 24 poles, second overall and the most of any rider during his time in the championship. Spies now turns his attention to his final two races of the 2008 season. He will race for Suzuki in the inaugural Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix this coming weekend and then finish the ’08 campaign with the AMA Superbike final at Laguna Seca on Sept. 28. “I still have a couple of things I want to accomplish this season,” Spies said. “I’m looking forward to riding the MotoGP at Indy to try to improve on my Laguna finish. Then I can go to Laguna for the Superbike final and put my head down and race and not worry about where I finish. It should make for an exciting end to the season.”