Rockstar Makita Suzuki's Mat Mladin raced his Suzuki GSX-R1000 K9 to victory ahead of team mate Blake Young at Saturday's opening AMA Superbike double-header race at Barber Motorsports Park, Birmingham, Alabama.

Although this victory was a first for the brand-new '09 model, it was Mladin's 78th career AMA Superbike victory and Suzuki's 52nd consecutive AMA Superbike victory.

Mladin started from pole position - his 59th pole position - and took the lead on the sixth lap and never looked back. The six-time AMA Superbike Champion led the remainder of the laps to the flag.

Rockstar Makita Suzuki team mates Blake Young and Tommy Hayden followed Mladin home in second and fourth positions, respectively.

Mat Mladin:

"At the start of the race, the boys were having a bit of a go and I was trying to get a feel for the new 2009 Suzuki with a full tank of gas and a few laps in. I had a bit of a look at what the other guys were doing and made my way through. I just tried to keep it solid, but tried not to wear too much stuff out, because we really didn't know what the bike was capable of doing or what it was going to do to the tyres. This motorcycle, as far as a GSX-R1000 goes, is very, very different to any other one we've ever had. It's a very different motorbike. We have some work to do to try and figure out a few things. We didn't want to go too crazy today. We were riding hard, but we needed to keep it within a certain envelope."

Blake Young:

"I got a pretty good start out there on the Rockstar Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000. After getting out front, I really wanted to see what the track was like and I just tried to get comfortable and put in a pace that I was comfortable doing. Ben Bostrom came by and he was running a bit quicker, so I just jumped in and tried to learn where he was a little bit better. All of a sudden Mat came by and he was running even more of a quicker pace, so I knew he was going to go. I was just trying to stay on his rear wheel and wait until he went by Ben and try to go with him. It didn't end up like that. We had to wait another lap, but I just kept my head down and worked really hard this weekend. We've got another race tomorrow, and hopefully we can get up there and race with Mat a little bit longer."

Tommy Hayden:

"The race went all right. We made a lot of changes to the bike last night, the most we've made in a long time and definitely on this new bike. And not having a warm-up this morning because of the rain, I wasn't really sure of the bike. But as the race went on, I got comfortable with the GSX-R1000 and was going faster and faster. I was able to close up the gap to the battle for second place. But unfortunately, I ran out of time and I wasn't able to get by. But I definitely felt like we were moving forward today and hope that tomorrow we'll start out a little bit stronger and get a little bit better result."