World Super Bike Rider, Best job in the world !

A glimps behind the scenes

Hi, to all World Super Bike fans .

My first impression of walking through the pit gate is wow ! look how many trucks the teams have , money springs to mind. With excitement, it felt like the circus was in town, indeed it was the World Super Bike circus.

What a life  ! 

To travel to events all over the world , its glamorous .

To a biker the best job in the world would probably be being a rider of a glamorous team.   What the public do not see is the dedication behind the scenes of the riders and the staff involved.

With the pressures of performing well in practise and qualifying the riders have a lot on their mind regards to getting a good set up for the races to come, this pressure is  passed on to the mechanics and the garage staff who equally want to do well.

On occasion i would get a glimpse of a celebrity rider at the back of the pit lane garage door where there would be stood autograph hunters hustling to get what they want, armed with pens and camera's.

The riders were pleased to sign autographs, i could detect a small amount of hesitation at times because of the time schedule they have to be keep.  

One particular time i remember Max Biaggi making his way in and out of the garage door heading to the large trailer parked ten feet away, trying to do his best for the fans with pens he made it back to the garage door.

 When  Max Biaggi got half way through about to pull the door closed behind him he paused and turned to a young boy stood there who missed his chance to see the super star, with a calculating hesitation Max Biaggi quickly signed an autograph. a picture of this can be seen in our gallery on motopsychos.co.uk     .

The event is now running, behind the garage wall are twenty or more team trucks with trailers all customised with the sponsors logo's.  In the back of the trucks, team workers are rushing around with lots to do like running Erans taking parts that's needed into the garage.

A Eran to be run was getting tyres fitted to the wheels, with a one tyre manufacturer race series Pirelli tyres were there in support of the event.

The tyre fitters at the Pirelli bases worked flat out all day, with each team being allocated a certain amount of race & qualifying tyres, team members stand by with a trolley rack loaded up with wheels with used tyres to be removed.

Pirelli ! what a turn-out, two bases each had about six tyre machines lined out neatly, my main observation was the amount of tyres stacked & racked, each one costing in the region of £200.

After being around the garages for some time I got excepted to get in closer and see what was going on, i could see how busy each team member was and it the importance of not to get in the way,  men with laptops and  mechanics changing set-ups, each was deep in thought with the job at hand.

Rider Tom Sykes explained how team members  have many jobs. The truck driver can  be the chef and the mechanics assistant, Evan the beautiful grid girls all have other jobs to do, every body in the team works so hard together.

Observation , the bigger the team the bigger the hospitality and the more work had to be done, the size of these hospitality suits is unreal, the amount of work involved to set up this is incredible.

After the last race the workers soon start to empty the garages while others put bikes away hidden in compartments in the trailers, busy like ants is how to describe . This is the time when i realised how much the team members work, time to dismantle what was put up just a couple of days before.  This is to repeated at the next venue after spending days on the road.

So next time you watch a race on TV or go along to watch at the venue, have a think about the people behind the scenes that make it possible for this great event to take place.

You can see pictures of behind the scenes World Super Bikes Donnington by clicking the link below. 

http://www.motopsychos.co.uk/list-3-431-c.asp

Thank you for reading .

Stephen Bonnici

motopsychos.co.uk