Day 9 – Riding The Corkscrew – Consequences
N36º 34.224' W121º 45.678'
Finally turned onto the right road, I found myself in the lakebed proper (basically, the bottom of the track) and found a sign that helpfully said ‘OEM Parade Lap’. First time all day, mind you, but reassuring to know that the event was real and someone else besides myself was aware of it. Even better, I had two of the requisite three pieces of information. I just needed a waiver. Having finally arrived where I needed to be, I joined in the free-for-all trying to get their hands on a waiver form. Apparently, the officials weren’t really serious about the 8am deadline (by this time, it was closer to 9). They weren’t really serious about order, either, because the patient line of riders waiting to complete the waiver was constantly interrupted by a stream of newcomers who made a beeline for the official with the clipboard.
Eventually, having tried both in my ignorance jumping the queue and once I realized what was going on standing in the queue, I came to the appreciation that the powers that be had absolutely no clue what was going on. There were two people with clipboards, and at least 30 riders who were anxious to sign the piece of paper on said clipboards. In no way was this process being managed. What’s more, once you signed the clipboard, you then had to show your license and registration to someone else who took the signed waiver, followed by someone else hole-punching your ride ticket, followed by someone else giving you a blue dot to put on the left side of your visor. In no way, however, did there appear to be any level of communication between these someones. I signed the waiver, had it taken, got the blue dot and then got my ticket stamped, all without someone looking at my registration. This made the last minute blitz back to the hotel a relatively moot point, except that others had their paperwork scrutinized with the level of attention normally associated with communist-era border guards at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. So it’s a bit of a crapshoot whether I could have skipped that part of the exercise or not.
Finally, however, after much grief and many more miles than seemed strictly necessary, I was going to ride Laguna Seca. It was a unique and memorable experience simply to be led out onto the race track. It has one of the smoothest surfaces I have ever encountered, and it just beckons you to open up the throttle and see what you can do. On cue, about 30 Ducatis all in a line thundered into life, releasing a guttural growl that reverberated down the track. Ducatis genuinely have their own unique sound. It hasn’t been registered as a trademark in the same way as Harley-Davidson’s iconic ‘potato-potato’ thump, but it is nonetheless distinctive, a mechanical bark that demands attention.
The briefing before we were let out on the track had indicated that we were getting two laps of the circuit. Once we were lined up on track and ready to go, however, the marshals indicated that we would be doing three laps. Wheeeee!
We started in the uphill straight after Turn 5. We’d be climbing up and along the top of the course, through the Rahall Straight. After this is the fabled Corkscrew, one of the most well-known (if not infamous) features of any race course. It drops the equivalent height of a five-story building, with a left-hand turn in and a right-hand turn out (hence the name). You quite literally fall down the hillside. I know this going in, but simple intellectual understanding in no way prepares you for what you encounter when you actually traverse it for the first time.
Coming along the top of the hill, you see the blue and white banding on the left edge of the turn, and then… nothing. The lip of the hill reveals no clue as to where the remainder of the track lies, or where you need to be on it. What’s more, you enter in a tight left turn that needs to be far tighter than the approach would suggest. Anything less than full commitment to the turn, and you’ll hurtle into the sand runoff on the right-hand side of the track. Immediately over the ridge, and you need to plunge into a hard right to keep on the track. Successfully riding the Corkscrew is nothing less than an exercise in faith and blind trust — literally. And I was doing the turn at about 80 km/h, while racers do it at more than 200.
From the Corkscrew, you descend back down into the lakebed, around a left hand turn and then a right until you have one final, sweeping hairpin that separates you from the home straight. Opening up full, and we hurtled to our fastest speed on the track — all of about 125 km/h. Top speed in an actual race is often more than 300 through this same stretch. Our limitation wasn’t any caution on our part or limitation on the part of the race track organizers, however. It was simply as fast as you could get to before prudence and a healthy sense of self-preservation demanded that you start breaking heavily for the imminent tight hairpin that represents Turns 1 and 2. From top gear down to second, and with the bike leaned over at what felt like a ridiculous angle, we approached the sweeping right-hander that was Turn 3, followed by a similar right-hand bank at Turn 4. Lastly, a left-hand bend at the top of a gentle uphill rise brought us back to the point where we started. And I get to do this two more times!
What is astonishing, and not really obvious until you actually ride on it, is how narrow the track actually is. To leverage a (relatively) speedy motorcycle around the circuit, you are quite literally using most of the available track surface. There is a fairly narrow range of pavement that represents a safe line to follow. On the last lap before we were unceremoniously booted off so that the Honda riders could go out, I was leaning over further than I’d felt I had yet on the turns. And I’m doing nowhere near the speed that racers travel at. Nor was I jockeying for position to pass everyone else (although I did manage to pass a couple of slower riders). My respect for what actual racers take on in riding this circuit just went up immeasurably. I love motorcycling, without question. What it takes to race a motorcycle successfully, however, is something else entirely.
All of this, and I haven’t yet had my first cup of coffee of the day. Leaving the track, I head back through the backroads of Laguna Seca to the exit. This time, however, I’m going out the front gates, not the back ones. A steep descent into the valley, a right-hand turn on Highway 68 and I blend in with the rest of the traffic. While I may look like every other motorcyclist on the road (and there are certainly a lot of them here) this ride feels very different. Alessandro and I have been amongst the few that have actually ridden the circuit at Laguna Seca. We’ve launched ourselves down the Corkscrew and lived to tell the tale. We’ve ridden the same track that countless legends of motorcycle racing have pitted themselves against. And unlike the racers, we’ve then gone into Carmel to hunt for a good Americano. It doesn’t get much better than this.