Having covered Mat Mladin for over 10 years now I have always been impressed with him, as a man, and as a racer. I have always found Mat to be very fair. Back in 2001 at a January test at Laguna Seca I interviewed Mat for the old version of Rumblestrip.net and in transcribing the interview misquoted him. It was interesting to actually get a call from Mat himself to ask if that is what he had said. It turned out that he was correct and I was not. I posed a correction to the interview and an apology for misquoting him and we were good. In fact as long as Mat wasn’t “working” he was always available for a chat, an interview or just to say hi. It was also then that I found Mat to have a very good sense of humor.
Dave Despain who I’m going to guess hasn’t always been a fan of Mat given their dust ups in the past still has great respect for the guy and says so here on a recent episode of WindTunnel.