Days 32-33: MotoGP, Saturday and Sunday 11 and 12 July

Jen drove us to the Sachsenring via an ATM on Saturday. It’s annoying that all the food and drink stalls are cash only. When you get beer or shandy you pay an extra €2 per plastic glass and get a red token. You then get your €2 back when you return the containers and tokens. It’s quite a good system for minimising plastic waste.

After the final lap of the time trial they stop in front of our stand and do practise starts.

Both Mike and Jen bought tee shirts on Friday and I got a MotoGP magnet. After Friday we learned to take long sleeve garments to save our legs and/or arms from the sun.

I can’t get used to the number of Europeans that still smoke. We also noticed that there seem to be a lot of very large people of all genders. Not US large but solid – and often heavily tattooed. The men, in particular, seem to make growing a beer belly into an art form and then both sexes seem to expose as much white flesh to the sun as possible.

We didn’t see this guy today but he didn’t look good yesterday!

The other funny thing is that there is often a queue of men for the loos but almost always capacity for the women (to be fair, our stand has 2 large sheds of flush loos and lots of capacity for both men and women. And they were always spotlessly clean with lots of paper).

Many of the blokes were laughing as this is not the normal situation!

On Saturday there were noticeably more people and Jen was worried about getting decent seats in the stand. Our stand doesn’t have numbered seats. However we were in plenty of time both days and had good, unimpeded views of the track and the big screen.

There was a helicopter stunt show. I wished he would do his stunts near another stand!

On Saturday there are time trials for each of the racing classes (Moto4, 3, 2 and GP) in the morning. Those trials determine the grid position for the afternoon sprint races and the Sunday championship race. The sprint races give championship points to the riders.

At least you know who’s leading during the races! Well you need to zoom onto the names on the screen for the full list.

We were supporting the 2 Marquez bothers, Marc and Alex. Marc was last years overall series champion and has won at the Sachsenring about 9 times. Both Spanish brothers ride Ducatis but for different teams. Both have also had nasty accidents relatively recently and Marc needs to win both the sprint and the main race in order to be in contention for the championship after the coming 3 week summer break.

At the end of the time trials, Marc had the course record for fastest lap and Alex was second. Together with Fabio di Giantonio (Digi) they were the top 3 for the sprint and main race. The Saturday sprint is 15 laps and Sunday’s main race is 30 laps.

The sprint was won by Marc, then Alex then Digi and it was not super exciting as they just held their starting positions.

On Sunday there are even more people. Evidently there was an attendance record for the weekend of 263,000 and it felt like that. There are loads of people in wheelchairs and/or disabled in one way or another. Given the scale of the venue it’s no small effort for anyone not fully able bodied to get around and to enjoy the event.

We had been to the Japanese restaurant downstairs from our apartment for dinner on Saturday so we just shared 2 of these pizza bread things smothered in sour cream for breakfast/lunch on Sunday.

I’ve definitely had enough German hot dogs, which have varying types of sausage but all get smothered in either or both mustard and ketchup.

This was half a ham and cheese pizza bread thing. Tasty but probably 3000 calories.

There are various parades and formalities on Sunday but the main race was what it’s all about. Marc never looked like losing but both Alex and Digi crashed out so the Japanese and a Spanish rider for the Aprilia team came second and third. Immediately the race was finished the fireworks started. Not entirely clear as to the purpose given it was mid afternoon and broad daylight!

The exit from the course was not efficient as per Friday and Saturday. They didn’t seem to have enough police to cope with people traffic around the multiple buses and our queue of thousands seemed to be at a standstill for over 30 minutes despite multiple buses arriving and it took at least an hour for us to get on board.

All those people going to and from the buses walk past these rather sobering memorials to riders or drivers who have died at the Sachsenring.

The buses all turn around in this car park place.

Then exiting the car park took ages as everyone let others into the queue including those who had just driven to the front in some cheaty way. Very frustrating. However we eventually got going and I drove so that I got the feel of the car.

The MotoGP was a real experience but I don’t know that I could handle another weekend in the sun just to watch motorbikes or cars whizzing past at hundreds of kilometres per hour!

Our apartment is the one above the restaurant sign. It extends right around the corner.