TOOELE, Utah -- Ben Spies rode to a seven-second win
Saturday in the first race of an AMA Superbike event at Miller
Motorsports Park. In 100-degree heat, the defending series champion sprinted away
to a fast start on his No. 1 Yoshimura Suzuki and held on to beat
teammate Mat Mladin. "You can't give up six seconds in the first couple of laps to a
guy whose lap times are very similar," Mladin said. "At about
half race distance I threw a couple of chunks out of my rear tire
and couldn't come back." The win gave Spies 345 points in the series standings, ahead of
Mladin's 337. "An eight-point lead is nothing at this point of the season,"
Spies said. "We've got nearly half of the races still to go.
Things went really well today, but I need to string together a
number of these kinds of races to have things go the way I want
them to go." Jake Zemke was third on a Honda leaving him third in the
standings with 261 points.
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