**Official** Tye at Laguna blog - Ducati.ms

tye1138 · Jul 21st, 2011, 10:13 pm

Welcome to the 2011 Tye at Laguna blog. I tried to do this last year, but it didn't work out well, so I figured this year would be a good time to start.

Monday started the week with a Alpinestars party with Lorenzo and Spies at the Roosevelt Hotel in down town hollywood. They have a bowling alley and I arrived early, so I started to bowl before the party started. Man, I haven't bowled that much in quite sometime, there was nobody to bowl with so I just did it on my own. As I sat down after my first set, Lorenzo was right next to me. We chatted it up a bit talking about his flight and how things were going in the states so far, he was pretty awake for someone who had just been on a plane for 15 hours. Spies showed up not much later and we had a good time chatting and showing off each others scar's, as he picked up on mine as they are pretty obvious from recent motocross crashes. I spent some time with Mary and we hit it off well. She seems very alone in the MotoGP paddock, which is too bad because she is a nice person.

The night ended too soon and today (thursday the 21st) Peter Starr and I drove up to Laguna with cameras in toe!

Day one was great, got our passes early and hung out in the paddock for most of the day talking with the AMA guys and bumping into Edwards and Hayden, though not for enough time to talk very much, just quick chats. Also ran into Steve Parrish and he remembered me from last year, when we had dinner together. Hung out on the hot pit for a bit, though I'm so use to being on hot pit's, I didn't even think about getting my camera out as they pulled out the Duc's to warm them up (woops). Had to work a bit, organizing the weekends events, dealing with clients and shit, but it was all good.

Towards the end of the day, hung out with Kenny Robert's as Peter knows his mechanic well, so we were aloud in a special area where they were prepping his 500cc 2 stroke 1980 GP bike for a lap of Laguna tomorrow (friday). That was great, got to shoot the shit with him and the mechanics about this incredible machine. Eddie lawson eventually showed up on his way out the door for the night and Randy Mamola came over to say good by as well. Randy and I will be doing some stuff later during the week, I'm trying to get lawson as well, but we'll see. I did get some great video of them working on Kenny's bike, I will be making a video, but I posted a few stills from the video on here so you guys could see. They suck, but at least you can see the bike, very kool stuff and the highlight of my day for sure!

Well, thats the end of day one. I will try and capture a lot of stuff for you guys tomorrow (friday) as it will be the only day I'm not frantically busy, the rest of the weekend I will be working.

mduc · Jul 21st, 2011, 10:26 pm

I saw and heard that bike today, it sounded sick. Can't wait to see it on the track this weekend.

**Chuckracer** · Jul 22nd, 2011, 12:25 am

Wow! That's a helluva start to what promises to be a very cool (but busy) weekend! I'm very envious!

If I may ask...what work are you doing? Working w/ Peter Starr, I presume?

tye1138 · Jul 22nd, 2011, 9:48 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckracer

If I may ask...what work are you doing? Working w/ Peter Starr, I presume?

Shooting video for (ThrottleHand) and working with peter selling books and DVD's. Fingers are crossed things go well today, might come home with a lot of decent footage!

NSP · Jul 22nd, 2011, 10:32 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by tye1138

Shooting video for (ThrottleHand) and working with peter selling books and DVD's. Fingers are crossed things go well today, might come home with a lot of decent footage!

Quote:

Originally Posted by tye1138

The night ended too soon and today (thursday the 21st) Peter Starr and I drove up to Laguna with cameras in toe!

you wont have decent footage with cameras stuffed in your toe.....you will have plenty of discomfort and will probably need an orthopedic shoe!!

that sounds really really cool so far....you are really lucky to have been able to speak with Lorenzo, Spies, and his mom. Have fun this weekend and post some pics!!

tye1138 · Jul 22nd, 2011, 11:51 pm

Day two and it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.

Started out with a nice round table with Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and Kenny Roberts shooting the shit. Then it led into a day of walking around organizing sat/sun, which is going to include a lot of book/dvd selling. So lots of sitting around waiting for people, lots of discussing and meeting people. Met Paul Butler the MotoGP race director, hung out and discussed things, sadly more along the lines of medical things related to the prostate film I just finished cutting! LOL

Got to do the interview with Spies, not a big deal, kinda boring actually. Sadly everyone disappeared after and I didn't get an opportunity to ask about Edwards, but I will try and figure out something for tomorrow.

Good action on track today, it was great to see the gp guys on track, its always a thrill. Got some decent unique footage of them as well, but not enough to even cut something short together, so I got a lot of footage to gather tomorrow and sunday. Went to the Ducati island today for the 11:00am meet, nobody else showed up. I wore my mad duc racing T shirt, can't miss me, but I guess everyone did, oh well.

Ended the day dining with Bryan Drebber who is a commentator, Bruce Porter who is the US Arai racing support guy and of course a few special guests, all industry people. It was a fun dinner, discussing accidents, racing in general and how Casey Stoner is really a punk-ass sometimes... LOL

On a side note, Chris Filmore had a bad crash today on the RC8. He is in the hospital and is doing OK, but sadly will not be racing this weekend. He took a major spill, highsided and didn't even know his name when he came to. He is the first person to go down this weekend hard and it sucks because I was really looking forward to talking with him.

Tomorrow is gonna be a lot of work, gonna hang with Ben Bostrom at some point and hopefully interview Edwards, so fingers are crossed!

I'm off to bed, more stuff tomorrow and yes I did get pix today, but sadly I'm too tired to upload them!

Tard · Jul 23rd, 2011, 2:16 am

^^^Which industry are you in Tye? Film or Name-Dropping?

Oi, punk-asses are 'all talk no action'.

Stoner's one fast mofo... He's no punk.

All the best for the weekend.

Matt_P · Jul 23rd, 2011, 3:07 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by NSP

you wont have decent footage with cameras stuffed in your toe.....you will have plenty of discomfort and will probably need an orthopedic shoe!!

Haha nice catch.

tye1138 · Jul 23rd, 2011, 9:13 pm

Day three, lots of on-track action!

We were stuck at corner 4 today in the flagroom selling books and DVD's. Met a lot of great people, had some great conversations and of course watched a bunch of qualifying.

The MotoGP FP3 was quite interesting, it looked like Ducati had figured something out at first, but Casey raised the bar and then again, the Ducati's were back of the pack. I was kinda not expecting much, Laguna is a very fast track and if the bike ain't perfect, its not gonna perform. I made a comment to Peter about Hayden coming out of 4, every time he'd come out, the bike was oscillating up and down in the back, which is something you use to see with the aluminum swing arm. Rossi's bike looked MUCH better then Hayden's, but of course, he was still a second off the pace.

I found it interesting that Ben Bostrom was given the chance to ride the GP bike. As much as I like Ben and think he's a VERY talented rider, I just didn't think it does anything for him to ride that bike, having not ridden it before. But at 37 years old, he impressed me (again) by only being 4 seconds off the pace in qualifying, which was quite impressive for his first time on the machine. Using track knowledge to at least get a decent few laps in. Ben and I talked before he went out for qualifying and he was very excited, after all what does he have to loose!!! I was able to watch him very closely through 4 and 5 and he was for sure off the pace, but ya know, maybe a few months on the bike, he might be able to cut it in MotoGP.

Its always funny to watch AMA vs MotoGP because the difference in times is roughly 4 seconds and in world superbikes, the two are pretty much riding the same pace. So it shows yet again, how bad the rules are in AMA.

At 3 we did a book signing with Kenny Roberts, which went very smooth and I thank him very much for helping, everything went well. Then we took off and hung out in the Speed TV box, talking with everyone down there and Scott Russel comes in the door pissing and moaning, yelling at greg white and shit, it was so awesome. He said it wasn't worth doing this stupid good for nothing job and walked out. The other two commentators were kinda very stressed out and also kinda walked out, it was a very interesting situation I just happened to be smack dab in the middle of... woops!

I got a great bit of smut on a few things today, very interesting stuff from a high-up Yamaha official. Turns out Rossi is almost ready to snap and is tired of Ducati not doing what he wants them to do, sound familiar? The difference between Rossi and Stoner is; at least Stoner could ride the bike, but Rossi has more political influence and could just walk if he wants. Yes, believe it or not, his contract says that if he can't win on the bike, he might be able to get out of it! The whole deal about Rossi sticking around for 2 years, maybe it won't happen! I guess at the last 1000cc test with Ducati, they were 2 seconds slower then Stoner on the 1000. Anyhow, interesting things... not as if we couldn't all guess this was the case, it at least sums up the fact what we guessed was semi-true.

We then hung out with Gary Nixon and Roberto Pietri, which was very nice, the two of them are such great guys.

We left early today in order to have an early night since we're leaving sunday right after the race to go home.

Great day today, can't wait for the race tomorrow!

Matt_P · Jul 24th, 2011, 4:33 am

^Rossi should go back to Yamaha where he belongs...