Pilgramage

Opinion/Commentary
By Pete Hitzeman
for R6Live.com

After a seven hour sprint across the deserts and hills of southern and central California, I abruptly found myself at home among friends. Moments before they were total strangers, but just then, sitting around a campfire with a beer in my hand, I realized that we had essentially known each other for many years. Stories were exchanged, arguments joined, and jokes were told as if it were the reunion of a long-separated family.

Perhaps it was. I was at Laguna Seca, an unlikely race course nestled into the hills near Monterey. During one weekend every summer, the otherwise tranquil and picturesque nature reserve explodes into three days of power and pageantry known as the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix.

Attending a race weekend is a shock to the system of even the most ardent race fan. The assault on all senses, the intangibles of the atmosphere and the proximity to one’s heroes combine to produce a state of almost childlike bewilderment for the racing faithful. To be sure, watching a race on television may give you a better overall understanding of what’s going on throughout the weekend, but it is no substitute for the in-person experience.

And there is no experience quite like MotoGP.


Superbike races are a great time as well, don’t misunderstand me. The access the fans get to the paddock, the riders, and the race experience as a whole is really amazing. But a MotoGP weekend is, understandably, orders of magnitude more enthralling. The manufacturers pull out all the stops for their displays. There are free concerts, demo rides, prize drawings for everything from a hoodie to a place in the MotoGP hot pit for a day (the latter of which was won by a resident of our own camp!).

And the bikes. Nothing can quite prepare you for the sound, smell and feel (yes, feel) of a thoroughbred MotoGP bike rocketing past you at full song. At all times during a lap, the bikes sound like every ghoul of hell resides within their fairings. In person, you can see them buck, weave, and try their best to send each rider to an early grave. And while you can’t watch a whole lap at a time, watching each rider come through a single section can reveal details you’d otherwise never know.

A race weekend is the playing out of a short, intense drama, and there are few tracks better suited as a stage than Laguna Seca. The track was most decidedly not designed on a computer. The front straight isn’t straight. Corners are blind, and the elevation never ceases changing. The corkscrew simply defies description. Watching trackside as rider after rider dropped off the edge at the top, it seemed that they could continue to do so only on faith. Prudence would tell you that it’s not a place on the track to go fast, simply to survive and move on to the next corner. But the riders would plunge from the summit with abandon, twisting the throttle viciously as soon as the suspension settled into the next corner. The drama of the section, the ten-story drop in elevation, and the action this part of the stage provides is iconic in all of motorsport.

Walking around the track, you’ll find many of the finer aspects of mankind on display. Displays of courage and heroism abound on the racetrack, of course, but the spirit of brotherhood, of charity and of general goodwill are found in abundance off the track. In this respect, I’ve found that a motorcycle race is quite apart from other large gatherings of people. Though I’ve never been able to identify the reason, there is a camaraderie and understanding peculiar to motorcycle racers, riders and fans. I am frequently humbled to be counted among them.

A race weekend is equal parts art, heroism and superlative emotion. Motorcycles careen out of a corner at the razor’s edge of control, hurtling away at impossible speed through the waves of heat emanating from the asphalt. A symphony of noise blasts from each exhaust pipe, adding music to the scene. Old men and young boys shout, jump and cheer alike. The new convert and the seasoned veteran feel a common passion being stirred within them for the spectacle unfolding all around.

A race weekend is a place where incredible things can, and always do, happen, and the action on the track is only a part of it. I barely slept for days, but I wasn’t tired. I was sunburned, injured and sore from miles of walking, but I was cheerful. And so were tens of thousands of my brothers and sisters, transported as we were, for a weekend, to that other world known only to those who have been there, a Grand Prix weekend.