The fuel tank would need modification because of tank capacity. Fuel mileage at Daytona is about 0.8 of a liter per lap, and a full tank is right at 18 liters. “You’ve got a warm-up and a cool-off. It gets kind of close,” Sakakura said. “We lowered the fuel pump two inches or something, just because one of the problems is not so much capacity, it’s the fact that it doesn’t use all the fuel in the tank. We lowered that down to create a cavity,” revealed Doyle.
Because only homologated parts are allowed on 2009 machinery, Doyle checked with the AMA Pro Racing tech boss two or three times a week.
“We ran a lot of stuff by him and said, ‘Hey, this is the situation we’re in and we want to make sure we’re going back one bike, so back one year,’ so we just made sure,” Doyle said. “We clarified a lot of stuff. And he was good enough to give us fairly instant answers. If he couldn’t answer immediately, he’d call back 30 minutes later, so he was obviously talking to someone.”
Mladin wrenched his back on...
Mladin wrenched his back on his first flying lap of practice for Daytona, and it affected the normally imperturbable Australian during the entire weekend.
When Mladin rolled out for Wednesday morning practice at Daytona, it was the first time he’d ridden the bike. After only one lap at speed he was back in the pits, his session over. Entering the chicane on his second flying lap he’d wrenched his back. “You could just see it in his eyes. He was in a lot of pain,” Sakakura recalls. “Thought maybe he cramped up or something, but obviously it was a lot more serious than that. I thought, well, just salvage some points and get through the weekend and get home and get him healthy. You know Mat, he’s able to soldier through a lot of that.”
Mladin quickly found he couldn’t use his physical, aggressive style, saying it was both hard to tuck in and “a bit hard to manhandle the bike off the turns and stuff. Just sort of sitting there at the moment like on a Sunday ride sort of thing. I don’t mean to say that in any way, but it’s just pretty hard to manhandle the bike when you’re scared to move because you’re going to get jolting pain. I guess that’s one good thing about Superstock bikes,” said Mladin sarcastically about the new AMA Pro American Superbike class, “it’s definitely a bit softer than the old superbike.”
Mladin knew two things; he knew his back wouldn’t improve, which meant he knew he wouldn’t be healthy for the race. He said he was going to “try to get something done. Again, what can be done, I’m not 100 percent sure right now because I don’t know what the issue is. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with my back from some old compression fractures, but nothing that’s been a problem on the bike. But this is a completely different deal.”