MotoGP

I went to my first MotoGP event ever, and the best part of all of it was we got to go with Media access. VIP treatment the whole way. We were in the "paddock section", which is the area for media and there are hospitality tents from each MotoGP driver where you can get free food and drinks. I couldn't believe it. At first I thought they were just for the pit crew but most of them were open for anyone (in the paddock section that is).

In my mind, this event was representative of Spain vs. Italy. The top two contenders were Dani Pedrosa from Spain and Valentino Rossi from Italy. Everywhere you see people with clothing with the colors of their favorite racer or with the Spanish or Italian flag colors. I saw this one group of guys who all were wearing wigs that were spray painted red/white/green for the Italian flag, which should be the pic above. Some guys even had their flags hanging from their shoulders like a cape. Reminds me of Tyler on St. Patty's Day.

Valentino Rossi has been the champion for many years now and unfortunately in the practice run, he fell down and fractured his hand in 3 places. He still raced the next day, trying to stay in the championship because he is so good that all he needed to do was just finish with minimum points on that race and he would still be 2nd place world championship. Well, once I knew the poor little guy was hurt, I wanted him to win. And he really is little - all of these guys are like half of my size, literally.

During the race Dani Pedrosa was pretty much always in first place (booooring) but the interesting part was that Rossi was holding his own and still not the last person in the race. How embarassing is that? A guy with a broken hand is still beating someone? In the last few laps of the race Rossi finally couldn't deal with the pain anymore and had to leave the race, putting him automatically in 3rd place of the world championship.