The new leader didn’t ease up until the final lap, allowing him to open up 5.921-second lead by the time he took the checkered flag on one wheel.

Even Mat's comments afterwards felt more ‘Mladin-esque’ as his ultra-competitive nature shown through a bit. “After the second race at Infineon, anyone that thought the championship was over obviously hasn’t been watching what’s been going on the last seven or eight years. If anyone thought we were just going to roll over, that certainly wasn’t the case. We’ve been working hard and I’ve been working hard.”

He continued, commenting on the need to get things back on track this weekend, “At Infineon it was getting to the stage where Ben was starting to get away a bit too far. We really had to think about what we’re going to do. We had a good test at Miller and as I’ve said, I feel Ben is a bit stronger than me in a couple places on the racetrack. Today I turned that around. I was at least as strong as him in the places where I wouldn’t have been a few weeks ago and still a bit stronger in some places I’ve always been strong. That’s racing. You need to learn and adapt. That’s life, not just racing. You adapt and try and move on and make yourself better. That’s what we’ve done so far and we’re looking forward to the challenge the rest of the season.”

Speaking about his approach to Sunday's race, Mladin explained, “We put the new forks in today that Ben’s been on the whole season and finally got them feeling pretty good. That certainly helped out a lot. And then this morning we made one change to the bike and that certainly helped out in a couple spots. After I watched the race last night I felt that I could make a bit more time on Ben. Yesterday after watching the race I felt Ben was staying in the race because he was catching the end of the draft halfway down both of the straights. I thought if I could get away and put some good laps in and break that little bit of wind that might be all we had to do and today it worked.”

Spies finished second while keeping an eye on Zemke, who took third to duplicate Saturday’s podium order.

“The first part of the race was really good,” the 21-year-old Spies said. “I knew what laps we could run and right before the red flag I was actually on a lap that would have probably gone into the high ‘11s. The second start, something was just a bit off. I don’t really know what it was. It’s not a big deal -- we obviously didn’t have his pace today either way -- but something definitely was amiss. When Mat came by me I tried to hang with him a little bit but I knew there was no way -- I just couldn’t do it and I was going to throw it down the drain there. I just kept it up on two wheels and the last couple laps got pretty difficult. I kept tabs on Jake and made sure we could finish in front of him.”

Despite seeing his rival snap his win streak and start one of his own, Spies stated that he’s mentally strong enough to use the weekend to fuel him rather than damage him. “It definitely doesn’t hurt my confidence at all. This is just going to make me go home and try harder and train harder and do everything I can. We’re still leading the points… it’s going to be a fight for sure.”

Third-place man Zemke said, “All in all I’m really happy because I actually finished on the same straightaway as they two for once. We’ve come a long ways since last year and we’re really working hard to get that bike up to the front. These guys are just riding awesome right now and they’re taking it to us. But we’re going to keep plugging away at it and we’re not going to just give up and roll over. We’ll keep charging and we’ll keep trying and one of these day’s we’ll get to race with these guys.”

DuHamel, who appeared capable of providing Spies with a real challenge prior to the red flag, fell back late in the race and as ran low on fuel. He was pipped at the line for fourth by former World and British Superbike champ Hodgson, and the Canadian was very nearly overhauled by Yates as well, finishing less than a tenth of a second in front of the sixth-placed Georgian.

Bostrom finished seventh with ZX-10R-mounted Hayden eighth. The Jordan Suzuki trio of Jason Pridmore, Jacob Holden, and Steve Rapp came home in ninth through eleventh, respectively.

Mladin’s huge weekend saw Spies’ early-season title advantage whittled down to just 21 points (322 vs. 301). DuHamel lies a distant third at 251 with nine of 19 races completed.

The Mladin/Spies showdown will pick back up in two weeks time at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, UT June 16-18.