Having gone a perfect three-for-three in the first three rounds of the 2008 AMA Superbike Series, Team Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Mat Mladin appeared to be having his way with America’s premier roadracing series. However, Mladin’s teammate Ben Spies brought the Australian back to reality this weekend by racing to victory in both AMA Superbike National races at Auto Club Speedway in baking hot Fontana, California.

In Saturday’s race, Spies enjoyed a quicker start over Mladin and led the first nine laps before Mladin went flying by. Spies held fast, shadowing Mladin and making a “too close for comfort” pass on the back straight on lap number 13 of the 28 lap race. In fact the two touched at one point, sending Mladin over the curbing, forcing him to lose a significant amount of momentum. Spies would continue on to win the race by over 20 seconds. Third on the day went to Tommy Hayden — also on a Rockstar/Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000 — who got the battle of a thrilling late race duel with American Honda’s Neil Hodgson.

In Sunday’s Superbike National, Mladin found himself in the lead some four seconds ahead of Spies. However, the Texan kept chipping away at the leader’s advantage, and by the time the checkered flag was waved, Spies was out in front, winning the race by an eye blink margin of .011 of a second.

"That was one of the toughest races I've been in," Spies said of his back-to-back wins, Mladin now leading the 19-race series over Spies 178 points to 158. "I couldn't make any inroads the whole race. We started sliding around in the last laps and the last 10 laps I was pretty much out of control. We barely got there and he made me work for it."

Yet again, Tommy Hayden made it a Rockstar/Makita Suzuki team sweep, placing third overall ahead of Honda's Neil Hodgson and Team Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo and Eric Bostrom. Kawasaki's Jamie Hacking guided his Monster Energy Kawasaki ZX10R to seventh place, placing ahead of Scott Jensen, Matt Lynn and Dean Mizdal.