Superbike World Championship Imola 2009

This past Sunday me and a couple friends took the train out to Imola to go to the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari to watch the Superbike World Championship. It was ridiculous. The walk from the train station was pretty straightforward and we didn't get lost because you could hear the bikes half a mile away. When we got to the ticketbooth we had to contend with Italian scalpers who wanted to sell us passes that would get us into the Paddock (way out of our price range even from a scalper though very tempting). They seemed desperate, however, and even dropped the price to 50E from 70E which was a really really good deal but we had already decided the cheapest seats (standing room on the field) were already expensive enough being 35E. This also all happened in Italian which made it even more confusing. We got our tickets and entered the raceway but our section was on the inside of the track so we went through this tunnel just as the bikes were coming around for another lap above us. It was awesome. They were so loud and fast it was ridiculous. Standing right there you could barely see them pass. They also get so low on the turns and are so close to one another its insane that nobody crashed while we were there. After one turn they came out going uphill and because they began accelerating again they all broke out into wheelies once the hill leveled out going 100mph at least.

We saw about four races and it was hilarious to see the Ducati superfans go crazy when the Ducati team won both of the SBK races. About half of them had no shirt, the rest wore assorted red Ducati logo shirts, some had airhorns, some had flags, and all of them went nutz when the racers made their victory lap. On the podium they played the Italian national anthem and people around us were waving their hands conducting in the air. Then the announcer yelled something about champagne (prounounced loudly and like Christopher Walken on SNL) and they all started spraying bottles everywhere. It was hands down the most fun day trip I've had since I've been here.