Indianapolis GP: Race Day!

On race day, we got to the Speedway while the 125cc race was underway.  Cess and I immediately headed for our seats, while our friends checked out vendors row.  Our seats worked out extremely well as they were high enough that we could see (and take pictures) of the action without having any of the safety barriers and fences in the line of sight.  The 125cc race was very competitive right to the end where one of the riders crashed in the last turn of the race.  He was obviously fine as he hopped up, picked up his bike and finished the race, but we still felt bad for him.  Lousy way to lose a few spots right at the end.

Next up was the 250cc race, which while still good, wasn't quite as competitive.  The top 2 riders remained 1-2 the entire race.  But hey, at least Aprilia had a strong showing taking 3 of the top 4 spots!

Before the main GP race started, Kevin Schwantz did a few parade laps around the track on his '93 championship bike.  Itwas awesome to see a racing legend of the past on the track.  Despite being in his 50s, he was still moving at a pretty brisk pace. He wheelied down the straight!!

By about 3pm it was time for the GP bikes to hit the track.  The race itself was decided pretty early with both Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa crashing in the first few laps, basically handing the race to Jorge Lorenzo.  Rossi's bike was damaged and he was unable to continue, while Pedrosa eventually got back into the race... in last place.  Over the remaining 20 or so laps, we were treated to an absolutely incredible show by Pedrosa.  He was clearly the fastest man on the track and lap by lap we watched him closing in and passing other riders.  When everything was said and done he managed to move up 7 spots to finish 10th.  Knowing how far back he was, it was an incredible feat.

The overall atmosphere was great, the sights and sounds intoxicating.  The one thing I found quite odd was that there were only about 60-70,000 people at the race.  Hundreds of thousands attend boring NASCAR races at the same venue.  I just don't get it.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  We hit the road to head home right after the race, and walked in through the door at about 3am on Monday morning. 

Indianapolis GP: Qualifying

One thing that we worked in during our trip planning was meeting up with one of our World of Warcraft guild members, Kallesto.  He drove 3 hours to come and spend the day with us and experience some of our motorcycle culture.  Thanks for coming out!   

We got to the Indianapolis Speedway at about 1pm, just as the 125cc bikes were finishing up qualifying.  The MotoGP bikes were up next.  Cess and I watched a portion of the qualifying from the inside of the track around turns 2 and 3 before moving to our assigned seats, section J, located just before the main straight.

The weather was great the whole day and hearing the bikes up close was quite an experience.  You can totally distinguish each of the bikes based on sound alone.  While the roar is pretty loud, we haven't felt the need to break out the earplugs just yet.  We'll see if that changes today on race day.

One quick pic from yesterday:

Motorcycle gear galore

Before heading on to Indianapolis, we stopped off at Iron Pony Motorsports, the largest motorcycle gear shop in this part of the US.  The store is absolutely huge, and there are some really good deals to be had.  We spent about 4 hours at the store and between the 5 of us, we purchased 2 large cartloads worth of gear.  Cess and I got some super deals on:

• Dainese perforated leather jacket (for me)
• Dainese textile pants (for me)
• 2 MotoGP jackets (for Cess); one leather, one textile
• Fieldsheer mesh textile pants (for Cess)

With these buys, we'll be able to replace some gear that we've had for a few years and is now in need of replacing.

Iron Pony Motorsports:

Gear:

On the way to the Indy GP

We're spending this weekend at the Indianapolis Grand Prix, one of the races on the MotoGP circuit (the premier motorcycle racing class in the world).  There are 5 of us going to the races, so we all met at a friend's house in Mississauga.  We'll be in his car the entire trip, so we get to be backseat drivers, woowoo!  We crossed into the U.S. with no incidents at the border.  After nearly 700 kilometres, we arrived at our hotel just outside Columbus, Ohio.