MotoGP was awesome.

Buzz, and his girlfriend, Becky flew out last weekend in preparation for the race. They spent the week being good tourists and seeing the sights in the city. Winsor flew out on Wednesday, completing the group . We’d later meet up with my old roommate, Brian, but he was with other friends.

Day one

When we got to the track, I was greeted to the unmistakable sound of Superbikes (a nebulous term, which now basically means 1000cc motorcycles). I was a little surprised, but apparently supporting MotoGP was a round of the AMA races. This was really awesome, since I thought I blew my chance to see the AMA guys when they raced at Infineon (Sears Point) in May.
We made our way to the track and set up a little camp overlooking quite a bit of track, which was really novel for our party (all Ohioans). At Mid-Ohio, we can only see one or two turns, but since there are large hills at Laguna Seca, you can basically see half the track at once.
Buzz, Becky and I decided to go and check out the vendor area, and on our way back MotoGP practice was announced. We were just past the Dunlop bridge when the first bike hit the track. As it screamed by us (about 20 feet away) I realized that this was not a normal race. I knew that the bikes were louder, but I was not prepared for how much louder they are. 130 decibels is incredibly loud, and by the time Nicky Hayden rode by I realized that I’d need earplugs. As I was watching in amazement, I saw a strange black and yellow bike. As it went by, I realized that this was Valentino Rossi, but his normally blue bike was decked out in old-school yellow and black “bumblebee” Yamaha colors. In fact, all the Yamahas had special livery to commemorate their 50th anniversary, as well as the return of premier class motorcycle racing to the United States. From the start, I was enamored with the new colors. They look so cool, and differentiate Yamaha’s bikes from the pack in a way that their normal blue and white color scheme doesn’t do.

We were treated to several practice sessions that day, as well as Superbike qualifying. Mladin got pole… again… It’s this type of domination that’s made AMA Superbike such a chore to watch this year.

Pictures from day one

Day Two

We got to the track early on Saturday, but not early enough. The line of traffic was immense, and we waited in traffic for about an hour and a half as bike after bike rumbled past. I was jealous that I didn’t bring the VFR, but I’ve been concerned about its reliability ever since it started konking out when I’d go on rides by salt water. In California, all there is no such thing as traffic if you’re on a motorcycle.
Saturday featured the AMA Superbike race which — to everyone’s surprise– Eric Bostrom won. I love it when Mladin loses, it teaches him humility, which he needs to learn. What was really exciting was the MotoGP qualifying featuring Nicky Hayden laying down blistering lap after blistering lap. At the end of the day, Hayden had the pole position, with Rossi right behind.When I got back to the hotel room, I thought I had gray hair because of all the dust and dirt; when I showered, the water ran brown for a while.

Pictures from day two

Day Three

We decided to head out early, but from the look of things, 56,000 other people decided the same thing. Again, we fought traffic as we approached Laguna Seca, but since we left early, we arrived at around 9:00, which was well before the masses. Relatively unencumbered by the crowds, Winsor and I went to the Honda booth to get some free swag. They gave us a hat, a shirt (both were nice) as well as a bandanna, a poster, some stickers and earplugs –pretty impressive giveaway, no?
Soon enough, the main event came around, and it was incredible. Winsor and I set up camp by the Red Bull bridge, after the corkscrew. Buzz and Becky opted for the same spot we had on day one. Because the bikes are so loud, you can hardly hear the announcers, but for a second I thought I heard that Nicky Hayden was in the lead. About a minute later, my suspicions were confirmed as Nicky came tearing through the corkscrew. Amazingly, there was already a substantial gap between him and the second place rider, Valentino Rossi. I’ve been following MotoGP since they switched to the four strokes, and I’ve seen this scenario play out many times before. You see, Rossi will hang back for a while and let the lead rider set the pace and go through his tires. Then he’ll make a pass with a lap or five left in the race. That’s the Rossi way, but Nicky had other plans.
I didn’t have a stop watch, but it seemed that Nicky was pulling away from Rossi. The space between the two was visibly larger lap after lap, and all of a sudden, another bumblebee bike was right after Rossi. His teammate, Colin Edwards, seemed to be making quite a charge after a terrible start. A couple of laps later Edwards passed Rossi on the corkscrew in a daring inside move. Then, he too started to pull away and chase Nicky.
Hayden, on the other hand was having a brilliant race and was stinking fast throughout. From what I could hear on the loudspeakers, he was setting a blistering pace and lap times were near the track record. The race ended just as Rossi almost completely closed the gap between his temmate and himself. Americans captured two of the podium spots, and John Hopkins came in seventh, which is respectable considering his inadequate machinery. The crowd went nuts when Nicky Hayden took his victory lap holding the American flag. It’s been a long time since that’s happened, here or anywhere else. Nicky then took a second lap with his dad in tow –what a great guy.

Buzz wanted to stay for the last race of the day, which would prove fateful. When we got to the parking lot, there was a long line of cars crowding the aisles, but none of them were moving. In fact, they were off. We waited around for about an hour and a half before we even got in to the car, and once we got in, moved about 100 feet in the next hour. I did get to watch the documentary Faster and it was very good. When it was over, I looked up and we still hadn’t left the track. We ended up getting some Chinese food in Salinas at around 9:00 and got back to my house around 11. We were dirty, we were tired, and we were excited. Thankfully, TiVo caught the weekend’s activities so we watched the MotoGP race again and savored Hayden’s win. It was fantastic.

Pictures from day three

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