You couldn’t ask for better weather, it was hot as it usually is but beautiful racing weather overall. Big crowd, new track records in every class, good stuff.
Mat Mladin just ran away from everyone. There was a lot of good racing further back in the pack but Mat wasn’t involved, he was off on his own.
When you go to the races you get much more sense of the business it is. The riders have the competitive blood and race for the glory, title and trophies. Of course, the good riders are well compensated for their efforts. But the factory and team effort behind the riders is far more obvious when you see the huge trailers, the crews all over the bikes, the spare parts and backup bikes, the debriefing of riders every time they come in. When Mladin suits up and walks out to his bike, this isn’t a weekend scoot, he’s going to work, it’s all business. He, like every other rider, has a job to do and lots of GSX-Rs are sold, no doubt, because he does his job very well. The difference in that line of work is what many do in their leisure, these guys do all the time. The TV viewer sees the race because that’s what the coverage is all about, the week after week travel, setup, the testing, that’s not really touched on much.
All of us would love to have some track time on one of the top bikes, though few of us could really do much with a beast like that, but how many of us would really want to be a racer? Rarely home, travel from track to track, week after week, … interesting to think about.