Tag Archives: Laguna Seca

Motorcycles, Track Bike Project, Trucking

May at Laguna Seca

12 May 2015 David Leave a comment

The Ducati 749 wore a new suit to the track this time around. Although it looked great, it’s mechanical state was not quite up to to the image. It was more show than go for Sunday’s track day.

The weekend started rough and it went a little downhill from there. While finishing the dress-up on the bike (the red gas tank arrived late on Friday), Saturday, the fuel tank o-ring was damaged and required a fast trip to San Jose to get a $25 replacement o-ring. At least the dealer had it in stock and I was able to get the bike back together in time to pull into Monterey for our pre-track-day dinner.

The first break in my routing was not unloading my truck on arrival. Once back from dinner it was 10:15 PM, I found that someone had pulled up next to me in the space I’d planned to setup my gear. There didn’t seem to be much point in unloading in the paddock at that point, so.. off to sleep I went:

Dawn comes early in Monterey, and despite my original setup plans foiled, equipment was unloaded and the bike was plugged into the generator to start warming up the tires:

With the rest of the crew arriving, we got the bikes into tech.

Dr. Johnny debut his newly refurbished track bike. He’s a happy camper, as you can tell!

Unfortunately, when unloading my 749, I noticed that the bike seemed difficult to move around. After some fiddling around we discovered that one of the front brakes was dragging pretty badly. My first session was going to be spent taking apart the left front caliper.

My pal Isaac was able to score a ride on the damn fine SuperLeggera owned by the track organizer. He was very impressed at the handling.. I guess light

I was eventually able to get the brakes handled and the bike on the track for the last couple of sessions of the day. Things went OK, but it seemed the brake was starting to drag again, so I packed it in; we all loaded up and headed for home.

Motorcycles, Ride Reports, Track Bike Project, travel

Laguna Seca Track Day

8 September 2014 David Leave a comment

Another GREAT outing at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, CA. Former home of the US GP, and current US stop on the FIM WSBK World Tour.

Thanks a TON to Dito at GotBlueMilk for the photos here!

Motorcycles, racing, travel

U.S. Red Bull Grand Prix – Laguna Seca “DUCATI ISLAND”

22 July 2013 David Leave a comment

WOO! Another year on Ducati Island, and being able to take advantage of the fact I own a few Italian bikes (including 2 Ducati) was awesome. My son was with me for the first time this year and he got to experience the awesomeness that is Ducati Island first hand. It was a great weekend!!

The first few pics were of us wandering around there on Thursday, before things really kicked off. It was nice that nobody harassed us, and my son was able to test sit a few bikes before the crowds descended the next day.

Motorcycles, photography, racing, travel

U.S. Red Bull MotoGP 2013 — Day 1

19 July 2013 David Leave a comment

Friday morning arrived early, and we set about stocking the trailer and getting ready to tow back to Laguna Seca.

Having secured an overflow camping site (one of the last handful as it turned out), the evening before, we embarked on the first campout at Laguna Seca for us; despite attending motorcycle racing there since the 1980’s.

It did not disappoint! Everyone has seen a trailer, so there are not many pictures of the expedition equipment itself, but Friday’s small crowd allowed for a leisurely day of exploring the vendors and taking some more snap-shots.

Motorcycles, photography, racing, travel

U.S. Red Bull MotoGP 2013 — Day -1

18 July 2013 David 1 Comment

Day -1 at the U.S. Red Bull MotoGP in Monterey CA was quiet, but attended more heavily than expected. The day before the official start of the event is always interesting.

I meet the vendors while they are setting up, and for those that are already selling, I start relationship building with them. This always pays off in many ways, not the least of which is simply meeting new people, and often old “friends” from events past.

Here are some photos of the wanderings around we did on Day -1.

photography, racing

American Le Mans at Laguna Seca

21 September 2011 David Leave a comment

Saturday’s ALMS 6-hour endurance race at Monterey’s famous Laguna Secs was fantastic. The GT class was the most closely contested race I’ve seen in a long time, where the lead changed between the last turn and and the start finish, right in front of the main grandstands! Talk about excitement!

Watching, and photographing racing at night was a first for me. A learning experience, and despite this being my first attempt, I’m still happy with some of the images I was able to capture. Most of that I need to attribute to Canon’s fantastic 200mm f2.8 L glass (which I obtained from the L.A. Times a few years back).

So.. without further yammering, here are just a few of the shots that I’ve processed so far, that I like. Keep in mind that Word Press re-compresses the images so you lose clarity… when I get unlazy enough to replace Word Press with a better CRM (when.. maybe never…) this sort of thing will not be such an irritation to me.

In the mean time, it is what it is, and these are the results:

Astin Martin 007 - The name is Bond, James Bond.

Class champion M3 passing an LMP car entering Turn 2

Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid - it completely dominated GT.

One of two Patron Ferraris, this one entering turn 2

Corvette loser-mobile — Corvette attempting an honorable mention finish, enters turn 2

racing

American Le Mans – a few shots from qualifying

17 September 2011 David Leave a comment

I shot over 500 photos yesterday at ALMS qualifying and practice. Here are few of those shots:

One hot car!

This happened early in the first qualifying session. The British, known for finding ways to make things leak, make the Jaguar, which dumped most of it’s oil on the track in the first turn: