Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

AMA Pro Racing officials first notified the Yoshimura Suzuki team that there was a problem with Mat Mladin’s Superbike pole-time from Friday qualifying when 7 minutes remained in the final qualifying session on Saturday.

Mladin was already off the bike and walking back to the team truck to change into his street clothes when AMA Pro Racing’s Ron Barrick came to Yoshimura Suzuki Team Manager Don Sakakura and Mladin’s Crew Chief Peter Doyle and said that due to timing & scoring problems, Mladin’s time from Friday would be disallowed.

“The problem I have with it is the way they did it,” said Doyle. “It was too late. We didn’t have a chance to respond.”

“I was already back in the truck when I found out about it, and by then there were four minutes left in the session,” Mladin said Sunday morning. “Yesterday (Saturday) I just concentrated on race set-up. We were done about 55 minutes into the (one-hour) session, and didn’t worry about trying to do a fast lap because we figured the lap time was safe.”

“As soon as I discovered Mladin’s time was not valid I came down and showed Don (Sakakura) what the real time was,” said Barrick. “I would have liked to have been able to give them the information sooner.”