AMA Teams Head To Road Atlanta For Testing, Without Mladin, Picotte, Hopkins

AMA Teams Head To Road Atlanta For Testing, Without Mladin, Picotte, Hopkins

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Several AMA teams and one Canadian team will meet at Road Atlanta April 10-11-12 for shared test time, with each team paying a share of track rental and operations costs.

Teams participating in the test, which was organized by Yoshimura Suzuki, include the following:

Competition Accessories Ducati
Harley-Davidson
Honda Canada
Kawasaki
Team Hammer (aka Team Valvoline EMGO Suzuki)
Yamaha
Yoshimura Suzuki

Yoshimura Suzuki will test without Mat Mladin, who broke his left lower leg while training on a motocross bike in Australia last weekend. Harley-Davidson will test with Mike Smith but without Pascal Picotte, who recently injured himself while riding a snowmobile. Chris Ulrich is joining Team Hammer at the tests as a temporary stand-in for the injured John Hopkins.

The HMC Ducati and American Honda teams had originally been scheduled to participate in the tests but recently cancelled.

American Suzuki’s Jeff Wilson, reached by phone April 9 as he was en-route to Road Atlanta, said “Yeah, that’s true. He (Mladin) broke his ankle. I don’t know what the status is whether it’s been repaired yet or just healing on its own or what. He won’t be at the test (at Road Atlanta), but he’s supposed to be ready by Sears (Point the next round of the Chevy Trucks AMA Superbike Championship). We don’t have any details yet. It may have already been fixed in Australia. Mladin’s a big boy. So he’s just taking care of it.”

When asked if it was the same ankle that Mladin regularly wears a brace on, Wilson said, “I think so. It’s his left, his shifting ankle. Who knows how well healed it will be by then, but that’s the plan–to have him on a bike again by Sears. It’s three weeks. He’s got a few days.”

Since Wilson made that statement, Roadracing World has learned that Mladin actually broke a bone in his lower left leg, not his ankle, and that he plans on having it plated.

Mladin’s injury makes it a clean sweep for the Yoshimura Suzuki line-up of riders. All three, Mladin, Aaron Yates and Jamie Hacking, have suffered injuries since the end of the 2000 racing season. Like Mladin, Yates was injured while training on a motocross bike.

Yates and Hacking also crashed in the pace car melee in the March 11 Daytona 200 but did not suffer any serious injuries.

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