Question: Would Aaron Yates have pulled over to let Mat Mladin past if he had been able to gain the lead over Eric Bostrom?
"No. Second and third is one thing, but a win is a win," said Aaron, who has podiumed seven times this season.

"Especially if Vic was standing between him and Mat," piped in Lucky Yates, Aaron's dad.

Yates' tuner Vic Fasola stands at least 6 feet, 8 inches tall and is a former basketball player at the University of Maryland. Fasola has tuned for Scott Russell, Tom Kipp and variety of other riders in his career, and on top of that is a fairly fast club racer when he gets a chance to ride.

Mat Mladin "Essentially the plan was to finish in front of Nicky, the position didn't matter. We figured if we could take our current lead into the next race we would be comfortable.

"For the first 30 laps Nicky was pushing really hard. I am pretty sure he and Eric both used a different tire than I did. Eric had a lot more drive grip than we did, but it wasn't something we had to worry about like with Nicky. With about 18 to go he really started to slow up. We caught him up pretty quickly. We went past him and put about 3 seconds on him."

"With about 15 to go Aaron went by but he pulled over and let me by."

What did he think of Nicky's aggressive pass?

"What that told me was that Nicky probably had a different tire from me and he wouldn't be there at the end. Honestly that's what I thought. So I stuck as close as I could and he came back to us."

Aaron Yates "A lot of it is just a better bike. Yoshimura Suzuki made a big breakthrough last year. In all the previous years, I struggled with the tires or the bike or something. I thought we could have run a little faster, but then I started to really get myself in gear. This place is so slick you have to really concentrate on what you're doing or you'll lose it in the blink of an eye. I got focused and moved in on Eric, just a little too late."

Why did you move over at the end?

"It's good for Suzuki, and makes them look good and that's what I am here for. Just showing my team spirit."

Yates' tuner, Vic Fasola: "We were trying to bide our time to when everyone's tires went off. It was coming to us, but we waited a little too long before we got it going. Especially with the picture with Mat and Aaron, the championship situation. We didn't want to go past Mat too soon. Obviously we were supposed to finish behind him."

Could Yates have won?

"I think the race would have had to been longer for us to win. I know Eric wanted to win bad. He was riding like it. It was a big balls move on their part. There's no way I would have done that. He really didn't have anything to lose."

Jason Pridmore (broke on lap 46 of 48)
"I am never mad at the racetrack, but this weekend I am pissed. It stopped running with 2 laps to go. No idea why."