Inaugural Red Bull Indianapolis MotoGP

The weekend of September 12-14 I had the extreme pleasure of attending the Indianapolis MotoGP. I had been to Road America and Brainerd AMA Superbike races before, but the Speedway and GPs were so different. The Speedway is HUGE. It’s hard to comprehend just how large that facility is. It’s so large in fact that it was, by complete guess, a 2 mile walk from the Hall of Fame museum inside Turn 2 to the street corner outside Turn 4. I didn’t have my pedometer, but I probably walked 3 miles or more each day. Thank God for comfortable shoes.

Rain put a damper on the festivities, but not enough to ruin my good time. It was also not enough to prevent me from being excited for next year. Speaking of rain… holy cow was there a lot of it! Thanks to Hurricane Ike, Indiana was blessed with a ton of rain that soaked the track, racers and fans. At turn one and in pit lane, the water was so deep the splash created by the bikes going through it were nearly as high as the riders themselves. Yet they still managed 175mph or more on the front straight.

We were fortunate to get some nice weather on Saturday, which made it far easier to get good photos. It also allowed me the chance to see Tech 3 Yamaha’s Colin Edwards signing autographs, so I got his. My brother in law Kevin had the chance to talk to Keith Urban, but didn’t have a pen, so no autograph.

Even though the MotoGP race was shortened by 8 laps and the 250 race was cancelled, I still had an excellent time. I can’t wait for next year.

I’ll post more thoughts about the race in the coming days, but for now, check out my gallery of event photos.