Blimpie Suzuki's Mat Mladin qualified third for the Brainerd Superbike race, with his time from Friday holding up. In fact, Mladin didn't even use a qualifier.

"I didn't bother," Mladin said. "Everyone seemed pretty slow in the session on race tires."

In fact, Mladin's qualifying session was severely curtailed by a bike problem that left him sitting on the pit wall. "I only got about 20 minutes. Something happened to my bike the second lap out of the pits," Mat said in the post-qualifying press conference. "I sat in the pits until 20 minutes to go.

Mladin's crew changed his equipment around and sent him back out. "I just tried to do a few laps and came in with four or five got a look at the times. It didn't seem like anyone was going to go much quicker," Mladin said. I felt pretty safe and now we have two extra qualifiers."

Mladin says the team is presently in future mode as far as the championship goes. "We're trying to get some stuff sorted out for next year, really. Just trying to find some stuff so that when we get to Daytona in December, we're ready to go. That's what we're all about right now."