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Inside MotoGP, elbow on asphalt at 210 mph

In MotoGP, a most strange sport, compact, highly fit men, most of them Spanish, Italian, Japanese, or Australian, maneuver 350-lb., multimillion-dollar motorcycles around Formula 1 tracks at 210 mph while wearing computerized suits that inflate when they fall off at speed. It feels as though you’re watching Tron live, and the crashes are just as spectacular. Driving these things requires a lot of nerve, as well as generous levels of Euro-style machismo. The riders of MotoGP can’t walk down the street in Barcelona or Milan without being followed by screaming fans. They’re like some sort of unholy marriage between Daft Punk and Apollo astronauts. In the United States, they’re just guys walking down the street.

Though the riders are extremely skilled, the sport, like F1, also involves a rarified level of technology. Eight of the MotoGP riders, the ones who drive for Honda, Ducati, and Yamaha, the teams that actually have money, wear high-tech suits made by AlpineStars. The suits have airbags that can deploy across the collarbones — broken collarbones are the sport’s primary hazard — as well as the shoulders and hips, and down the length of the spine. The airbags get orders from sensors and software that can detect an accident coming within milliseconds, as well as digital lights across the arms that allow riders to monitor whether or not they’re working properly. When they do inflate, they’re effective and subtle, and deflate just as quickly. In previous iterations, riders were wired up like an EKG patient and after accidents would lurch down the burnout area like Michelin men turned zombies. These suits are much cooler, and have saved lives.

During a demonstration at the MotoGP race around the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, I saw how the suits include synthetic polymers at the elbows and knees, since part of the sports involves keeling the bikes over at 65-degree angles. The riders drag their elbows and knees to find out how close they are to the ground. The answer is usually: Very close. The suits are well-vented and made of leather.

“Either cow,” said the demonstrator, “or kangaroo.”

“Kangaroo?” I asked

“Yep,” said the demonstrator, who was Australian. “Jolly old kangaroo from the good old Outback,” he added, without a trace of irony. “The really expensive suits have the kangaroo leather. It’s a lot more durable."

After that revelation, we went on a tour of the Ducati garage, which was hidden from the public by a labyrinth of synthetic walls. The bikes are proprietary technology, and the top teams wage a steady algorithmic arms race. We arrived at an opportune time, because the mechanics and engineers had the bikes stripped away of their padding and fenders, and we could just see the underpinnings. Wires stretched all over the room and we could see the central computers of the bikes blinking and churning out data, like Robocop between missions. Across the garage, a team of lab-coat wearing engineers looked at the numbers, while an equal number of mechanics lovingly polished the shock absorbers like they were fine shoes.

“OK, you guys,” the Italian Ducati garage manager said, shuffling out after five minutes.  “Enough for you. The bikes must have secrets.”

Then it was time to experience the culture of MotoGP. Though the lawn near Turn One filled up pretty nicely by the start of the final race, the bleachers at the Circuit Of The Americas were pretty empty all weekend, and the lines for beer, funnel cakes, barbecue, and Port-A-Johns stayed light. Compared with Formula One, it felt like off-season at Disneyland.

It was also a little more chill than F1, which is always a disorienting culturebomb of private yacht parties and elite access. MotoGP, on the other hand, straddles the line between motorsports and “extreme sports” and therefore features a lot more tattooed dudes in off-brand baseball caps. There are also, I must observe because I am human, a lot more young, attractive women floating around MotoGP, weather leather and short shorts. I made that observation to one of my colleagues, and he said “chicks and bikes, man, chicks and bikes.” It was hard to argue.  

The crowd on race day itself was larger and less idiosyncratic, as this is the day that people focus their attention on the track. The most fun came early on with the lower-level Moto3 and Moto2 rides. Those featured some impressive multi-bike spills up at the top of turn one. But the main event runs more controlled and less thrilling.

The current leading figure in the sport, a 21-year-old Spaniard named Marc Marquez, is on a legendary run and Honda has developed some sort of supreme robot bike for him. He’s setting records. Unfortunately, that reduces the drama substantially. He won the race by more than six seconds, an absolute eternity, and it made for dull watching. In general, that’s the problem with race tracks:  Even if there’s lots of passing and crashing, it usually happens when you can’t see it, except on video screens, and that’s not really worth 50 bucks a ticket. When I could actually see the bikes whiz by, it was pretty cool, but there wasn’t enough of it, at least for my taste.

I thought the fans were bored as well, but it turned out they were just paying really close attention. I sat out on the grass by Turn One, which is where all COTA connoisseurs end up, always exciting and conveniently close to the parking lot. There were some families playing cards and a lot of fat guys chugging tallboys, but there were also large groups of close-trimmed Euro men, sitting in groups of three or four, watching the race as though they were surgeons, in full concentration. Then when the race ended and Marquez roared across the finish line, they all stood up, waved flags, and applauded with a lot of enthusiasm. At that moment, I realized that I didn’t fully understand the sport.

But I did grasp that these bikers had hauled those deadly megacomputers around one of the world's toughest racetracks for 40 minutes, an incredible feat of danger and endurance. The day after the race, I had a morning flight to New York. Half the passengers were MotoGP riders. They all looked pretty solid considering what they’d just done; these are elite athletes.

On the flight, I sat next to an Australian rider for a small budget MotoGP team. Though his race had ended early because of a technical malfunction, which happens a lot on the lower-end teams, he said it had been pretty tough. Turns that an F1 car can handle easily are a whole different story when you’re skidding parallel to the ground at 220 mph while wearing a kangaroo suit. If you’re a motorcycle racer, it takes a lot of work to get out of COTA with all your bones intact.

“I was pretty lucky,” he said. “I only did eight laps.”