RiderX

Just finished watching Brno FP2.  Quite to my chagrin, Pedrosa’s not doing so hot, Hayden’s not racing.  At the end of FP2, Stoner, Rossi and Capirossi lead the pack.  Rossi lagged a second behind Stoner until the last lap where he closed it some.  I won’t be surprised if stoner is un catchable though I have hopes of another great race.

Excitement is building as the Brno Chech GP approaches.  Looks like Rossi and Stoner are ripe for a great duel.  With Pedrosa returning, and Brno being quite a different track than Legua Seca Sunday proves to be an exciting race.  I have high hopes that between the Rossi, Capirossi, Stoner, and Pedrosa, we’ll see one heck of a race.

More later.

A great start to 2008 MotoGP for sure. In hindsight, this was a great motorcycle racing weekend overall. Daytona and Qatar were both great races to watch. About the only thing I’ll say about Datona is that Duhamel was disqualifiedly from the 200. It seemed to me that it was more oriented in a misunderstanding of unclear rules. But I suppose rules are rules. He seemed to have bad luck all weekend long.

As for the GP, wow. First race under lights. I must admit I’m completely mixed on the idea of evening races under expensive and wasteful lights. Enough lights to light 4 soccer stadiums? Enough lights to illuminate a highway from the Losail circuit in Qatar to Moscow? One thousand lights? I just don’t get it. Motorcycle racing is a wasteful consumption of energy. Granted that we get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But do we need to make it worse? Racing in daylight seems the right thing to be doing.

Now that my rant is over, let’s talk about the positives. I mean wow, how about the aesthetics? Man bikes look great under the lights. And the illuminated track sure was a site to see. Racing under lights seemed to be much more practical and doable than I had imagined. When night racing was brought up I’d envisioned a few lighted areas scattered around tracks by grandstands, and bikes guided by headlight view over non-illuminated areas on the track. Qatar was not that way at all. The track was very, very effectively illuminated, and everything just looked great!

The race was great. Very entertaining. Several riders with injuries rode great. Not too much of a show from the Americans. The battle between Rossi and Dovizioso was very entertaining. Dovizioso, being a GP rookie did really, really well. Lorenzo and Dovizioso, both rookies, finished in the top 4. Pedrosa in 4th, with an injury leaving plates in his hand. Wow. These guys are monsters!

If this is what we can expect from the 2008 MotoGP season, I’m going to be very careful to not miss a single race!