OK, what the entire trip to Portugal was about – World Superbike Racing!!! Well, maybe not the entire trip, but a sharp focus for some of our party. The lovely folks you see here are: Paulo, Maria, Joao, and Paula. They worked as track marshals at different locations around the course. We had a great time hanging out with them after the races, along with the deviants from Yorkshire of course.

Notice that I am sporting Kawasaki colors instead of Ducati. I made good on my promise to support our Tom, and I will continue to do so. I can’t speak highly enough of him – when everything was finished, and at least a couple of hours beyond the last races, Tom came out to the outdoor bar area where all the track marshals, staff, etc. were gathered around having some beer and relaxing. He hung out for a pretty good while and took photos with fans, etc. Out of ALL the riders there over the course of the weekend, he was the ONLY person I saw do anything like that. That goes a long way toward promoting the sport and just being a friendly guy. Oh, he scored a 2nd place in the first race which would have been a win except for a misfire that developed on the bike during the last lap. The second race was not quite as good as he was running a solid second again, but one of his tires developed  slow leak that dropped him back to 8th. That’s racing! Here’s some pics from todays events:

The cool thing about sitting along the front straight, just above the pit garages meant that we could watch the monitors on the Honda station and see what was going on around other parts of the track. Thanks to our Scottish pals, Kevin and Angela for pointing that out.