We drove an hour from the basic but clean Hotel Nacional to the resort of Dona Carolina (horse-riding, exterior pools, football, volleyball and other activities) along roads with more speed cameras than London’s M25. Despite an unscheduled detour we ended up at the venue with almost thirty riders and a very healthy selection of the paddock. A swift but fascinating tour of the Cachaça factory on site (sugar cane grown for a year, filtered and then barrelled for two years) was augmented by the translation skills of Honda World Motocross team’s Rui Goncalves.
A handful of motocrossers (Roczen, Herlings, Bobryshev, Anstie and Kullas) then zip-wired 300 metres across the lake and back again – I don’t think any of these riders had sampled the free shot of Cachaça at the end of the tour. Lunch, a football kick-about with Ken De Dycker (the Belgian has a deft touch surprisingly) and a gaggle of riders then judged a gathering of Brazilian bikini girls to elect one lucky lady to be the Mormaii girl at the GP.
Well-fed and well-looked after the media-motocross hoard departed for Indaiatuba where a tight (at least three switchback 180 turns) and slippery terrain – with distinctive Brazilian red dirt – lay in wait.
Not a great deal of news emanated from the paddock. Yamaha had solved the technical problem that scuppered Gautier Paulin’s U.S. GP and MX3 World Champion Carlos Campano still had to use standard equipment after his bag held in customs in Washington was sent back to Spain.
As it grew dark and cold at the circuit, Ray and Mike indulged in more photography with a Mormaii girl for the upcoming ‘Girls of motocross’ section of www.mxlife.tv. We then set-off for Jatoba, a distinctive Brazilian meat restaurant where a bevvy of waiters bring an assortment of ‘carnes’ on spits and fill your plate. It wasn’t the cheapest – nothing in Brazil is (the people can even pay for training shoes in monthly instalments) – but the quality was good and the Skol beer was cold. We had the pleasure of two French journalists, Pascal and Stan, and the former is something of a connoisseur when it comes to wine and delicacies. I was so full I struggled to sleep.
Saturday at the track and unsurprisingly Clement Desalle and Ken Roczen were the lively riders throughout practice in MX1 and MX2. Roczen skipped away with MX2 pole and Tommy Searle was second before a slow crash and stall dropped him down the order. David Philippaerts showed the fierce style that grabbed four MX1 pole positions last year to earn his first of 2011, just in front of Monster Energy Yamaha team-mate Steven Frossard for a decent day’s work for the Yamaha crew. Tony Cairoli recovered from a second lap crash to finish third. Three big spills took place as the riders learnt to balance high-speed with the closed corners. Davide Guarneri was stretchered away with a suspected neck injury, Jonathan Barragan was nursing facial bruises after a bang in pre-qualifying and Zach Osborne was lucky to escape a fast exit off-track.
The Brazilian fans were queuing outside the gates at 8am this morning and were predictably crazy in their pursuit of a small piece of attention from the riders. The grandstands were almost full and the public even penetrated the off-limits infield area. It could be wild tomorrow.
