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Well, my apologies to Nicky & hats off to him - he was immaculate all through practise & in the race itself was never challenged (which didn't make for great spectator thrill from a pure racing perspective )
That's not to demean his achievement or say it wasn't exciting in other ways, but there's something missing from a race where the winner leads from the light & is never actually threatened once, even remotely. I mean even Rossi in spite of his brilliance has had some really exciting to & fro lead exchanges in a couple of notables this year. But that takes nothing away from the great accomplishment from Nicky - here's hoping he can build on that & do it at other tracks too. In spite of my prediction, I was amongst the majority who cheered every lap as he came by first & continued to look stronger & stronger with each circuit.
Edwards also had a great race & that was a little bit more exciting in his exchange with Rossi. The 4-7 group was another mini-race, as was 8-12.
The only damper on the day was the a$$-hole sherrifs in the park who decided that rather than try to control the car traffic to stay to the right, to allow the bikes to pass safely in the left without having to cross the line (lane-splitting itself is legal in CA) took a more opportunistic approach to gain revenue by ticketing bikes who were crossing the yellow line. My brother-in-law was one of the unlucky victims who were chosen at random (everyone on bikes were doing this - there 57K spectators there on Sunday - there would have been 1/3 of that if everyone, bikes & cars alike had to single file into the park.) Can't argue the infraction as it was strictly against the law, but there were zero vehicles coming out at 8am and we could have done without the gloating rhetoric - "See this list I have of 10 already? I'm going to go up there next & get 10 more!"
But all in all, a great day & I'll be back next year - maybe camp though! & I'll be delighted if Nicky can repeat but go into it with a few more podiums under his belt to accompany it.
We met some guys who rode out form Daytona to attend! One of them on a Triumph ST1100 with 106K miles on it - now there's a testament to reliability & longevity! Incidentally one of their group was local from San Jose CA but rode out to Flagstaff AZ to meet them, just to accompany them back from there!
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But at least we get to enjoy the Rossi parade.
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