The Nissan Path

This past weekend it was MogoGP time at Laguna Seca down in Monterey CA. The weather was cool with lots of overcast, but by race time at 2PM the sun had broken through giving a perfectly mild summer CA coast day. Before the main race was the Red Bull Rookies Cup race with teenagers as young as 13 turning laps, and later in the afternoon was the AMA Superbike race. My friend Monika and I shot 972 pictures between the two of us, here's a sample of the best...

before i even look a the pictures ... i am soooooo jealous. laguna seca is one of my favorite tracks.

and damn.... i totally missed the race
hopefully it is on replay soon!

~mike

Great pictures Carl.

The guy on the BMW up near the top of the pics, where it looks like he's doing an endo, is that a belt drive? Very cool. Thanks for the pics. Was there much smoke in the area?

The race is ofcourse up on The Pirate Bay already, downloaded it last night so I can see all of what's going on instead of what happened to be in front of me

I guess yeah it's a belt drive, you can see it in a few shots, is that unique for some reason? Sorry, not a motorcycle guy, I have no idea. No smoke issues at all, it's close enough to the coast and far enough north of the Big Basin fire that there was no problem.

RacerZX wrote:I guess yeah it's a belt drive, you can see it in a few shots, is that unique for some reason? Sorry, not a motorcycle guy, I have no idea.

Me neither. I don't know how common they are, but I know I've never seen one in real life.

No smoke issues at all, it's close enough to the coast and far enough north of the Big Basin fire that there was no problem.

Just curious. I know when I checked last week, the 1 was closed. I'm heading down that way 3 weeks from now, and I'm just hoping I won't have to detour around the drives I had planned.

Belts are the new chain. They have been around for years and all the harley/cruiser bikes have them instead of chains. I would think it's safer than having a chain break and lock up the rear wheel or slashing your leg.

historically, belt last longer than chains. there are no moving parts in a belt, and they require no cleaning and no lubrication. both are susceptible to stretching, but belts are definitely lower maintenance than chains. (i say this after I spent 30 or so minutes cleaning and lubing my chain last month)

~mike

Very nice pics. I am extremely jealous.

Awesome pics! What camera and lens did you use?
You obviously like taking pictures of races... and Monika

Indeed, she's quite photogenic, her husband is a lucky guy.

About half those were shot with a Nikon D70s, half with a D50. The D70s was using a 70-300mm Nikkor ED lens for long stuff and 18-35mm ED for close up work. The D50 used a 70-300mm G-Type (crap) lens with a Tamron 1.4x teleconverter for long range work (AF didn't work worth a damn, had to do manual focus, but still amazingly caught that crash with it), and some other wide zoom DX G-type lens for close up stuff.