This is it: the Top Gun of motorcycle racing. Only the best of the best get this far and to hang in for another season you have to renounce everything else but racing.
You have to eat it, sleep with it and every second of your time awake you have to focus on all the little things that makes your bike go faster, your mind a bit more determined and your team members a bit more willing to sacrifice everything else but the job they have, how small it is… all the way from the tasty catering menu for the powerful sponsors to the setting of your racing suspension on the day of competition. Everything counts in the MotoGP.
Checkpoint Öhlins got the chance of a lifetime… to spend a full weekend at the Estoril Circuit with Media accreditation as well as Premium Paddock passes to really get the full flavour of the most spectacular motorcycle series in the world.
On the track
The Autodromo Fernanda Pires Da Silva just outside Estoril is perhaps the best racetrack to cover as a suspension freak.
The track won respect by hosting the colossal Portuguese Formula 1 Grand Prix in the mid-eighties [and when the Formula 1 circus moved elsewhere] the track cast its skin into a MotoGP homologised track with a total length of 4,182 meters with four left turns and nine right turns. The longest straight is the massive 986 meter strip, but despite this the track is actually one of the slowest in the MotoGP calendar.
Tricky curves, unpredictable weather and turbulent winds pushed inland from the Atlantic sea, really makes the affair quite difficult, and it is a massive step from the slowest corner speeds at 60 km/h to the 325 km/h slingshot on the 0,62 miles straight just after the Parabolica Ayrton Senna Corner.
The Aussie rider Garry McCoy won the first 500cc GP race held at the Estoril circuit, but since then it has been an all-Italian affair. The “Doctor”, Valentino Rossi, has dominated the track with an amazing four-in-a-row victory campaign.
So, what’s the thrill of being a suspension freak in Estoril? Well, the thing is the great challenge to trim the front fork in the best possible way considering the high speeds on the straight and the heavy braking just before attacking the corners, not to mention the decrease in speed just before curve no. six, the Parabolica Interior.
As for the shock absorber the challenge is pretty much the same with high speed sections and slow, bumpy sections causing the suspension technician to sweat. A hard spring would make the whole bike more rigid in the high speed sections, but the slower, bumpier parts of the track would suit a softer spring set-up instead.
My first impression of the track consists of sounds… and odours. After quite an adventure finding a parking spot close to the circuit, I get out of the car to find myself swarmed by a cacophony of engine noise and a compact smell of race petrol and burnt rubber.
It is quite empty on the parking lot, except from the small rental cars with media stickers on the wind screen. My colleagues from all over the world are all here to witness another MotoGP and I will soon join them in the Media Centre, alongside the famous straight.
I have a lot of things going on in my mind. I will meet some of the most respected team managers in the motorcycle industry and I have tons of questions that I want to get some answers to. Most of the questions are actually personal ones, to be answered by no one else but myself.
To be honest this is my first ever MotoGP and I have absolutely no idea of how things work. I have got strong recommendations from back home to look out when I am in the pit lane, because everybody assumes that you have complete control and the riders don’t bother to be polite.
It is a tight little family in the MotoGP world and I am not accustomed to all the routines and small but important acts that will grant me access and respect.
I have done a lot of research back home to find the essence of the MotoGP phenomenon, and my mission is to somehow reflect my experiences back to the readers of this article.
I am on a mission to find out why the MotoGP is so popular and why Öhlins Racing is the most popular suspension supplier by far on the grid of the 800cc, 250cc and 125cc.
My questions will hopefully be answered by the persons that I have scheduled meetings with… I open up my calendar and once again I try to memorize the names of the persons I will meet up with: Daniele Romagnoli (Team Manager for Jorge Lorenzo), Davide Brivio (Team Manager for Valentino Rossi), Paul Denning (Team manager for the Suzuki Rizla Team), Crishian Pupulin (Technical Team Coordinator for Ducati Corse) and Mats Larsson (Racing Manager at Öhlins Racing)… my god what a line-up.
In the garage
I feel just like on the first day of school. Everything is new and I stick very close to my chaperone for the day… and what a chaperone it is.
It’s like being escorted by Gandalf himself when I walk with Mats Larsson, Racing Manager at Öhlins Racing. Wherever he goes people bow or salute him with a big smile, and he guides me around the garages, introducing me to some of the most influential team members in the motorsport today.
The word that first comes into mind is Perfection when I enter the paddocks. Every single detail has been studied and optimized, not just on the bikes but on the tools, the clothes and even on the colour-matched ashtrays just outside the paddock.
I feel like a huge elephant in the paddock despite the fact that I have moved up against the wall, hardly breathing at all.
It’s like a professional dance ensemble, but instead of soft music and lifting tiny girls in tights these guys carry racing tyres, wrenches, suspension parts and other tricky tools that I don’t know either the name or function of in their hands. And the sound is that from hell.
Friday morning. It’s ten o’clock and the one-hour training session for the MotoGP riders is just about to start. I am currently in Rossi’s box and all of a sudden everybody starts working in a hysterical tempo and they roll out his bike, and photographers, spectators and team members all gather around the paddock… despite the fact that it is a cold, rainy training session two full days before the actual race! This guy is a living legend. You can feel the ambiance in the paddock when he enters for a quick sit-down on his small chair in the corner, neatly topped with an embroidered seat cushion with a 46 on it.
The engine comes to life and my immediate response is fear. The engine hums with such a powerful resonance that my chest vibrates and the noise is beyond anything I have ever heard before.
Rossi stands up and walks over to the very edge of the Yamaha-blue rug with his toes just touching the asphalt. He stops and bows his head. Everybody gets real quiet in the paddock.
After just a few seconds he comes back from whatever place he mentally took of to and then he takes two steps over to the bike and once again stops to crouch in front of it. It feels like I am in the middle of some kind of religious act that I am not familiar with...and never will be, for that matter.
In a second he is on the bike and before you know it he takes off.
I run across the paddock area and find myself just a couple of feet from the long finishing straight. I can never, ever explain in words the feeling of seeing and hearing the bikes as Hayden, Rossi, Lorenzo and the rest of the boys pass me in speeds exceeding 300 km/h. Unbelievable… just unbelievable.
The second feeling that comes into mind is pride… great pride. These guys depend completely on the components they ride on that need to function in total harmony. This is not a game! If something goes wrong it goes really wrong. Taking a fall in 300 km/h is not something you would want to try, and to be a member of the company that supplies suspension parts to some of the teams makes me immensely proud!
On my way back to the hotel room, driving my dull, slow Peugeot 306 rental car, I can’t help reflecting over the fact that my day is over, but for the mechanics and drivers it is nowhere near finished.
Engine mapping, suspension set-ups, telemetric analysis, tyre controls and a myriad of other technical aspects must be scrutinized. And while I am eating a nice dinner at a fish restaurant down in the charming fishing village of Cascais together with my photographer, the riders retire to their mobile homes just next to the paddocks. I just have to accept the fact that I don’t belong to that world, and
will never be a part of the very special family of the MotoGP caravan.
Day of competition
I am a privileged man, no doubt about that. Dorna Sports, the exclusive holder of all commercial and TV rights of the MotoGP World Championship since 1992, has given me one of the desirable Media passes so that I can make my way to the inner circle amongst all trailers (I counted them, of course, and there were 58 trailers in a single, straight line!).
In the media centre I have a close encounter with the MotoGP nomads that constantly feed the outside world with every little happening in the MotoGP circus. Photographers are shuttled out to various photo positions around the track in small buses, but I soon find out that the really professional ones have their own scooters to be able to cover more interesting sections during the race.
Another funny thing is that a handful of radio reporters actually sit up in the media centre, reporting “live” to their home country by watching Eurosport on one of the screens that hangs down from the ceiling. It feels a bit strange to hear the race report in several different languages at the same time.
I grab a bottle of free water on my way out and the first thing I do when I pass through the doors from the media centre is to plug my ears. The sound is massive and it cuts like a knife in your head. The old hands of the circus have long since stopped using them, so once again I am an easy target for those who like to spend their time spotting newbies on the grid.
I spend the following hour trying to find a good spot from where to view the race. When this is done I make my way to the hospitality area, and for all of you that have never been in such an area I will do my best to describe the phenomenon.
All teams are more or less dependent of their sponsors and as a payback all serious teams provide hospitality areas for the sponsors and guests that come along to the events. As we are a long time friend of Yamaha Racing I get to spend a really nice time sitting in their mobile restaurant, ordering from a wide variety of pastas and other Italian dishes. The service is impeccable and the food is first class. The view is one-of-a-kind with Rossi doing an interview two tables away, Collin Edwards rushing by saying hello to me in his characteristic texas dialect and Lorenzo says something funny that makes the entire table next to me laugh. I am in heaven. Could someone please pinch my arm?
Don’t forget this is an ordinary trailer with some special features. Two days later the whole shebang is gone.
Stuffed with risotto, parmesan cheese and Pellegrino I walk off to my secret spot, just at the end of the massive straight before curve number one. I can see the heat vibrate over the riders and suddenly the monstrous sound of 18 MotoGP bikes at full throttle cuts through the air and in a second they have all passed me in a colourful blur.
After approximately one and a half minutes they all come by again and I am lost, totally lost. I can see who is in the lead, but it is a nightmare trying to sort out the rest of the field. My brain is working in a slow, couch mode and I find myself despairing at not having all the lap times and slow motion angles served by Eurosport back home.
But then I suddenly realise why all these fans come all this way. It is not to witness the best lap time or to get the perfect view of a spectacular crash. They are all here because they love the phenomenon. They are passionate about the brands they ride and they just love the smell and the colossal sound of the 800cc engines.
I turn my back to the track, now studying the spectators instead, and the parallel to the movie Gladiator is striking. The audience stands up every time the modern gladiators pass the sections and the crowd cheers, calling out the riders’ names. From now on I will remember these moments every time I look at Eurosport back home, and from this moment on I will be able to enjoy the race reports in stereo, not in mono, if you know what I mean. I seriously recommend all serious enthusiasts to save up some money and go visit a MotoGP close to you. It is time to go from mono to stereo in your Eurosport Sunday couch.