Day 3, First Day at the Track

Immediately upon arriving at the track this morning at 8am (which was very chilly in the 50s), we knew we had made the right decision to upgrade our race weekend ticket package. Our parking area was exactly beside the track, our stands and our hospitality building. We found our hospitality area, the Corner 9 Club, and were treated to a great breakfast.


The first agenda item of the day was the pit walk, which allowed us to view the rider garage area. Rumor had it that the riders sometimes came by to sign autographs. Michele parked herself in front of Nicky’s garage and got great pictures of his bike, but alas, no Nicky to be found!

Michele did get some pictures of Colin throwing t-shirts into the crowd though.

On our way out of the pit area, Michele had the eagle eye and saw Marco Simoncelli from Italy, Randy DePuniet from France, and Pol Espargaro from Spain.

After the pit walk, we watched the rider’s auction for awhile. Italian superstar Valentino Rossi was funny as ever. When asked if he was hoping for the Americans to get on the podium this weekend, he said “Yes, but behind me!”. Several of his auctioned items went for thousands of dollars.

Before lunch, we visited a few vendor areas, and Michele also couldn’t resist this photo of this lug of a guy with the most girly Chihuahua dog!

We also got to see the latest attempts of turning a Goldwing into an actual car.

We enjoyed lunch in our air conditioned hospitality area, appreciating a well-catered meal. After lunch, Rob secured his spot at turn 5, the only area on the track with a break in the fencing to allow for amazing photo opportunities during practice sessions as the riders screamed past, barely staying on their bikes around the turns.

After practice sessions, we got our paddock passes and walked behind the garage area. Michele soon realized that the 90 minutes she spent this morning in the pit lanes was for schmucks, as within a 10 minute span she had immediate access to Ben Spies, Colin Edwards, and Jorge Lorenzo.

We were pretty beat by 4pm, and Michele waited back in the hospitality building while Rob and Mike watched Colin give a typical good-humored interview. Our last stop of the day was back at the Ducati tent, with Nicky onsite but Michele being about 3 minutes too late to meet him before he finished signing posters.

We left the track around 6:30pm, a bit sunburnt but euphoric from our fun day. We picked up Mike’s mom, Connie, and went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. She is a lovely lady and patiently tolerated our nonstop chatter about motorcycles during dinner.

Tomorrow is filled with practice and qualifying sessions for all classes of riding. We also have the Ride for Kids Lap of Champions ride at 5pm on the track itself with former 500cc World Champion, Kevin Schwantz (#34). We are excited!