MM Laguna Seca Report

[G.Irish]

Whew, what an exhausting weekend! The hills around Laguna are no joke, my legs are still kinda sore.

Of all of the races I've gone to I have to say without a doubt that being there for Nicky Hayden's maiden victory in Moto GP (and the first American victory in 5 years) was the best moment I've ever attended. Everyone there was rooting for him all the way and seeing him do his victory lap with the American flag with his dad on the back of his RCV was a special moment.

I can't say enough about this event, it was just cool all the way around. RJ asked me if it was better than JGTC and I answered yes, but in different ways. Everyone at the USGP was super friendly. This is the first time I've experienced the moto-camaraderie and it really was pretty cool. People offering me beer, people inviting me to sit under their ez-ups, and people just generally happy to be in the company of other motorcycle enthusiasts.

To be honest, the Moto GP race was not quite as exciting as the other races this season. I got to see Biaggi make the pass on Gibernau and a few other passes but it really wasn't a big time scrap like some of the other races were.

The race of the weekend was probably Supersport (600cc sportbikes with limited mods). There were several lead changes, lots of dicing for position, and a last lap, last corner pass by Jason Disalvo for Yamaha's only win of the weekend. I'm sure the Yammy big wigs were grateful for that, it being their 50th anniversary and all.

At any rate, I'm definitely going to go next year if I can. I am going to do a few things differently though. For one, I'm going to camp instead of spending 3 hours trying to leave the track at the end of the day. If we can get a MM group together we could rent an RV for about $125 a day and live it up.

Welp, here are some more pics. The video I took was okay but I couldn't figure out how to turn on the image stabilization on so it screwed up a lot of the shots.

Here's a pic of one of Honda's 50cc GP bikes. It actually has bicycle brakes!


An awesome racing replica paint job on a RC51. Oddly enough, it seemed like the RC51 was the most numerous Honda at the event.


A Ben Bostrom 996


Two pics of the Ducati Island. The Ducati owner's club apparently paid for the privilege of having the little island to themselves for Ducs to park at. They had their own catering and hosted autograph sessions and a few other things for those that bought a ticket. One dude on a big pimpin WSBK replica 999R dropped his bike in front of the whole crowd going 5 mph on his way to island...





Here's a pic of said WSBK 999 in yellow (the dude who dropped it had a red one)



Red Bull had a huge presence out there. Here is a pic of some MotoX guys they had doing stunts off a ramp they set up and a pic of their skydiving team doing a jump right before the GP race.





All of the official umbrella girls were pretty much in the paddock and I didn't feel like fighting off the hordes of guys taking pics of the UmbrellaGirlsUSA.com girls so I got one of the cute factory reps to pose on the DRZ-400 Supermoto for me