Our insider news and gossip from the Sachsenring paddock at MotoGP Germany is about language, history, art and science. It’s like being back at school, but fun.
Hatman returns
By some strange tradition, every year one particular fan parades himself around the German GP paddock with a creative, if strange, hat, and it seems his talents are growing year on year. This season’s fashion was orange (in homage to Stefan Bradl) and sported six hand-made bikes that actually lapped the track that wound around his head! They were surprisingly consistent, but fortunately Sunday’s race was much less processional.
Hats off to the Silver Arrows...
World in Union
Aside from being the closest large town to the Sachsenring circuit and consequently a paddock-away-from-the-paddock at night with the number of team personnel staying there, Chemnitz was the home of the fabulous Auto Unions from 1936. The Silver Arrows dominated competition at the time and for decades to come in the hands of the likes of Tazio Nuvolari, Hans Stuck and Bernd Rosemeyer. Even the Mercure hotel is proud of this slice of motor racing legend, and understandably so.
Give us a Mexican wave...
¡Andale! ¡Andale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!
Friday night in the MotoGP paddock saw the entrance of Speedy Gonzales and Jorge Road Runner, Yamaha’s latest Mexican recruits. Mexican fever gripped the factory Yamaha squad and there was many a poncho and sou’wester to be seen in hospitality – alongside trademark beer and tequila of course…
Father and son
Unfortunately for Max Neukirchner, his Moto2 race came to a premature end when he got caught up in Aleix Espargaro’s highside, but there was another bike in the paddock sporting the Neukirchner name. Lothar’s beautiful 1985 250cc MZ (pictured below) was seen lurking behind the MZ Moto2 garage.
Lothar Neukirchner's 1985 MZ
Lost in translation?
Whether this poster was meant to read quite like this or whether it fell foul of Google Translate is unclear, but it neither looks nor sounds like the sort of music gig that would be especially enjoyable. Still, with Germany being the birthplace of acts such as Rammstein, maybe this is considered quite normal!
This will test your metal (sic)
65, wear it with pride
The Germans are often associated with questionable hairstyles. As over 230,000 fans crammed into the Sachsenring venue over the weekend, the local hairdressing trade had obviously been doing a roaring trade carving the number 65 into people’s hairdos. Presumably it was for their local hero and Moto2 championship leader Stefan Bradl (see Hatman, above), and not Italian MotoGP veteran Loris Capirossi…
Get smashed
One of Valentino Rossi's mechanics, Alex Briggs, is a prolific tweeter, with behind-the-scenes views of the travel between races, in the back of the garage and even what he gets up to DIYing at home in Australia. However, there was one picture he posted from the Sachsenring weekend that many would never, ever have seen, were it not for the 140 character phenomenon; a large stone through Rossi's windscreen would've played havoc with his visor… 
A hole lot of trouble... (Image © Alex Briggs)
Spectacular finish
The weekend was about close finishes with a dead heat between Johan Zarco and Hector Faubel in the 125cc race. The timings have sometimes said 0.000 difference on the screens, but in reality when the photo finish picture is studied, there can be a winner defined… except this time. Oh no. It had to be a count back to who set the faster lap during the GP, and that was Faubel who actually set the fastest lap of the entire race on the very last lap, beating Zarco by 0.269 secs on that last gasp tour. The second Red Bull Rookies race though was even crazier, with six riders coming over the line covered by just 0.689 of a second. Mad!
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