MotoGP

Start watching the video at 3:10. The video is in Italian, but you'll still get the point.

MotoGP is a sport that the United States does not get very much exposure to. However, the best riders are world superstars. The rider with the yellow all over him is Valentino Rossi. He only made $35 million dollars last year, so he does all right. This particular race was controversial because the two riders are teammates and they are going at each other very hard. Yamaha, their sponsor, would have been very upset if they had taken each other out.

MotoGP is a highly lucrative sport where bike makers try and outdo each other to earn bragging rights when it comes to selling their bikes. The bike makers use their motorcycle racing teams as forms of research and development where they can develop the technology and gear that will be in their motorcycles in a few years. Yamaha basically owned MotoGP while Valentino Rossi was on their team, but he has since left to return to Italian bike maker, Ducati.

I think that this video has multiple benefits to watching. It shows something that is different than what most people have seen, which is cars racing. These bikes are much more agile and can easily be thrown around the track from side-to-side. It makes these races much more entertaining, since the bikes are much easier to handle and positioning matters less so than in car races. In the video, there is plenty of passing and even a double pass. The video almost compresses the excitement of a normal MotoGP race into a few minutes to demonstrate how their races differ from the more often seen car races.

MotoGP also has an elegance that is unique to it. The riders don't sit straight on their bike, they throw their body around and place it at dangerous angles so that the power of the bike can be put to the pavement in the best way. It is a physical sport, not in the way that people think when physical sports come to mind. It is about making your body work the machine for incredible results.