I Finally Watched the MotoGP Race

Posted by Matt Finley Jul 24, 2007

I DVRed (is that a word?) the MotoGP event from Laguna Seca last weekend. Yeah, I know, for a motorcycle writer I'm a slacker. Truth be told, I've got races from months ago that I haven't had time to watch yet.

I typically leave the race coverage to my colleagues over at the motorcycle racing section of Suite101. Besides, Sunday I was at Crown Point North (San Diego Bay) at 4:30am eating jello-shooters, drinking kamakazi shots from a test-tube, watching the freaks in their under-wear and helping my wife set up her AT&T picnic which started about 7 hours after the first jello-shooter was done. Hey! Cut me some slack... The cooler that had the jello-shooters in it fell over and spilled on the inside of my trailer, what was I supposed to do?

Ok, back to the race. I knew there were a couple of new MotoGP faces, like Roger Hayden on the wild-card riding for Kawasaki. I also knew Wayne Rainey would be there getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. What I didn't know was that every American who's ever won a MotoGP championship was there, including Steady Eddy Lawson, both the Kenny Roberts, Fast Freddy Spencer and Kevin Schwantz (I hope I didn't forget anybody)

Ok, we're back to the race, now back to the reason for this post... I saw Miguel Duhammel there as well. Racing MotoGP.

Huh? Miguel? MotoGP?

My first thought was that he was too old to be starting a career in MotoGP. Then I realized he was filling in for an injured rider. Then I found out he retired from the race without crashing, without injury and without mechanical failure.

When I first heard him say what I interpreted as he basically got scared, I told my wife "I think I just quit supporting him in races". She wisely pointed out (as she often does), that he already wrecked one bike, and he wasn't feeling in "the groove" during the race and didn't want to wad up the other one and get hurt, or hurt someone else. (BTW, I'm STILL mad at Hayden for taking Hopper out!)

I can respect that. Really, I can. But to have a MotoGP bike handed to you and to refuse to ride it just hurts.

I was truly impressed with Roger, too. He got in the top 10 with less than a half a dozen hours on a totally different kind of motorcycle. I don't think Roger will have trouble finding someone on the MotoGP circuit to take him on next year.