| MotoGP 2019 |
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THE EVENT It was a historic and exciting race this year. Marc Marquez has won every one of the previous 6 MotoGP races at COTA, and always with a very impressive margin of time between him and 2nd place. And it started out looking like a text book Marquez COTA race. But about half way through Marquez went down in turn 12 and didn't rejoin the race. Race day weather was fantastic, but on Saturday pretty much half of the scheduled track time was lost due to some pretty serious wind and rain. Typically I take the lions share of my photos on Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday I am more focused on watching the races. But I felt a little more focused on photos during the race this year because of the greatly shortened time on Saturday. The crowds were diverse, as always. I got to chat not only with people from various other states, but also a very nice couple from Mexico City and a Family from Brazil. I always enjoy meeting people that have come from far away to see the races out at COTA. Unfortunately the tracks condition continues to be problematic. Many of the riders, even the ones that normally say the love racing here, were complaining about the dangerous bumps and dips that have formed in parts of the track. I know at least one rider went down because of them during the races. Hopefully COTA will get everything repaired so that MotoGP will come back next year. Several riders said that they don't want to come back otherwise. I suspect most of these bumps will be taken care of before F1 happens in the fall. THE PHOTOS I put the camera settings in the lower right of each photo, as usual. But what it doesn't tell you is that in many of them I had an 8X neutral density filter on as well. In fact, that filter was on my lens all day on Sunday. All of these photos were taken with my Nikon D500 and either my Nikor 70-300mm or my Tamron 150-600mm lens. I didn't attempt to put most of the photos in any sort of chronological order, or to even arrange them by day or race class. The top 2 rows are my favorites from weekend. And after that I just sort of grouped them with similar photos. The exception being rows 3 and 4, which are a sequence of shots of Tatsuki Suzuki (I love saying his name out loud) washing out of 1st place in the Moto3 race on Sunday. It saddened me because he's a good rider but never quite seems to get on the podium. After sliding to a stop he just sat there, I'm sure he was feeling bitterly disappointed. The other sequential series is the first 4 photos on row 7. They were all taken looking at turn 10 during the first 4 laps of the MotoGP race on Sunday. In the first shot, lap 1, you see that Rossi in 2nd place is right behind Marquez. Seconed photo, 2nd lap, you see a big gap has started to open up between Marquez and Rossi. Third photo, 3rd lap, Marquez is half way through turn 10 and Rossi is just out of frame. Forth photo, 4th lap, Marquez is almost out of turn 10 and Rossi is even further out of frame. If you are unfamiliar with these 2 riders, this is no indication that Rossi isn't doing very well. What it demonstrates is how remarkably fast Marquez is on this track. Well, that's it. I hope you enjoy a few of these. I certainly enjoyed taking them. |
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