IDM 5 Salzburgring

-No wonder Mozart was such a brilliant composer, there is nothing else to do than compose in Austria, since it`s frikkin raining everyday!

That was the comment of Mädi on friday afternoon after second free practise session on Salzburgring.
First of, we arrived to Salzburg on thursday evening and after some wondering about where the actuall track is located, we managed to find a road
sign that led us to paddock gates.
Roads leading to paddock area are so small and twisty, one is left wondering how in the hell is it possible MotoGP has been done there
all the way up to mid 90`s.
I had heard beforehand that this, proper olc school track is located at the most beatifull piece of land, right next to big mountais, but nothing
really prepared us for this place!
It`s sitting right on the bottom of a several mountains, but still closest farmhouses are literally with in few hundred meters.
Actually, some farmers sheep`s were eating grass, right next to tracks`s 0,5m high metal fence.
Only thing that separated them from bikes doing over 200km/h!
Those things must be pretty used to hearing some engines, since they were absolutely not bothered by the antics that were going on track just few meters
away from them.
Track layout itself is, like mentioned, proper old school. Superbike average speed is around 190km/h, so no wonder Doohan and co. really loved
this place.
Not at all like these modern day tracks where pure speed is replaced by technical sections.
However like mentioned in the beginning the weather in this place seems to be something else. We lost count how many times it rained during
weekend and then dried only to be wet again!
Must be caused by the mountains, since really rapid changes in weather happened all the time.
That actually caught us out, since in first set of qualifying, I had a plan to take it easy in the beginning and then pick up the speed gradually, but after
10 minutes of session gone, it started to rain and I was at the time on place 27.
So as one can guess that ruined the session for everybody and, since the second qualifying was wet from the beginning, I was permanently left down to 27th. place
for the race!
Hardly ideal place to start from and I still felt like I really don`t know my way around well enough, since this place takes some getting used to thanks to
it`s very high speed nature.
On sunday`s race I did a few nice passes and endend up on 20th place. Not end of the world, considering how hard I made it to myself with poor qualifying.
I had the pace to fight up to 12th place so not as bad as it looks.
Result wise, surely a crap ride from me, but that`s sometimes racing.
And actually moreover, I really liked this whole place and the track layout, so we stayded for two extra days after race and got some more track time
which I`m sure will help me next time out here.
This track is now one of my favourites, even the result was worst of this season.
Well will be strong next year, of that I`m sure!

few picks in "random" gallery and full results at: http://yamaha-cup.de/index.cgi?x=X&y=X&z=20110708-3320922-4108054169&a=aktuell&b=detail&c=1268&h=startOverview