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Brno MotoGP: Autobahn Follies, the Stone Throne, and Lukas the Wonder Boy

Posted by Staff
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Page 3 of 4 The Stone Throne The next morning we took the long hike up the hill to the racetrack. The campground is five kilometers (3 miles) from the track, and all of it is uphill. Fortunately, 3 / 4 of a mile from the campground is the start of a free shuttle bus route to take spectators up the worst part of the hill. Hopping off the bus everyone headed up the rest of the hills in the direction of their seats or grassy areas. I had a ticket to Area C, the most popular grassy area on the track. It reminds me of the steep hill above turn two at Laguna Seca. Brno area C gives one a view of the long straight that ends in turn five, and turns five through nine sweep around below you. It also has three wide-screen TV's so you can follow the rest of the race. That ticket also got me in to all of the rest of the grassy areas around the track. In addition to my tank bag/backpack, water bottle, and 12 X 50 binoculars (SERIOUS race fan here) I had a foldable canvas camping chair with me. For the last several years of Brno MotoGP visits I have sat in Area C. This time during the Saturday morning practice I began to notice a familiar pattern. Bikes would roar down the straight into turn five, line up in single file through the turn, and nobody passed anybody for the next four turns. Boring! I thought back to previous years and could only remember one time when someone passed someone else in those series of turns. That was one of Rossi's desperate lunatic moves which resulted in him running wide off the racing line and he was immediately passed again. Despite the fantastic view and the wide screens, this was clearly not the thrill-packed action part of the track. So I got up and left. I took a long hike over to area D on the other side of the track. It was a nice view of a lot of the same track you could see from area C, but with no wide screen. Off to areas E and G. Nah... Really cheap seats with no wide screen and nothing but a boring straight. So I headed back over to area C, and on the way I just happened to pass area F. If you are still reading this and getting glassy-eyed and tired, good, because I want you to be as tired as I was doing all of that walking up and down the hills. Laguna Seca is a flatland compared to Brno. Area F is on a steep hillside above turns ten, eleven, and twelve. Turn ten is a tight right-hander dropping down into a downhill straight. The turn eleven turn-in starts as a downhill left that rapidly deteriorates into a brutal off-camber 90-degree climbing left. 50 meters later is the uphill right-hand turn-in to turn twelve, the apex of which is at an elevation level-off. Misjudge your throttle control just before this turn in and you go off into the sand on the other side of the track, possibly airborne. If you have ever seen turn two at Infineon Raceway (formerly Sears Point) in Northern California, this is about what Brno turn twelve is like. So out of turn ten it is downhill hard on the throttle, back off and downshift-downshift-downshift-downshift, ease on the throttle and turn uphill on the off camber, followed by harder on the throttle straight uphill, and then completely off the throttle before the bike goes light at the crest, and turn a light bike in just before the crest without spinning out over the top and off into the sand. This was a place for some action, and I decided to make it home for the MotoGP. Later I was richly rewarded for this choice. Across the track was a wide-screen TV, making this a fantastic vantage point from which to watch the race. Strangely, the area was sparsely populated with fans, but I have since chalked that up to two reasons: 1) only one food and beer stand, and no souvenir stands, and 2) the area is not large enough for a lemming mentality 50,000 person race fan crowd. I did not care about souvenirs, track food is track food no matter how many stands there are, and I had a clear view of the wide screen with no sweaty seatmates to smell in the 90 deg F weather. Worked for me! The only drawback was that the hillside is so steep that my camping chair pointed 45 degrees down the hill, and I would slide off if I tried to sit on it. So after a few seconds of thought I gathered a big pile of the rocks strewn on the hillside and built: The Stone Throne! << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>

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