Ducati Austin’s Neil Hodgson made an extremely impressive debut as an AMA Superbike full-timer. The 2003 World Superbike champ shook free of a talented group of pursuers on lap 6 of 15, and then proved to be the only man capable of keeping Mladin honest during the middle and latter stages of the contest.
“I’m glad to have gotten that one out of the way,” the British hero said afterwards. “Everybody’s got a little bit of testing planned and then we’ll go to the next round. I'm really pleased. Last night when I was in bed if someone would have said, ‘You’ll finish second,’ I would have taken it. I’ve got mixed feelings inside; you feel happy to have gotten it out of the way and taken some good points and then you feel sick because you didn’t win.
“Unfortunately, Mat was just too quick. Everybody warned me; they said, ‘Watch out for Mat, he’ll go really quickly in the beginning.’ And he did, so I got caught with my pants down. But I don’t think I could have stayed with him anyway.”
The move he made at the start didn't endear him to Mladin thats for sure
