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A Grand Prix is like a heist.

Beating the best riders on the fastest bikes in the world

is more than a matter of racing ability.

It requires expert teamwork,

elaborate preparation and faultless execution under massive pressure,

with no margin for error.

The race is on Sunday at00 p.m.

The teams arrive on Wednesday.

They have four days to crack the code of the racetrack

and set up the bike for this particular collection

of twists, turns and elevation changes.

The riders practice on Friday and Saturday.

Two days to master the track and prepare themselves

for racing combat

at speeds of over 200 miles per hour on the fastest tracks.

There are 17 races on the MotoGP calendar.

Each at a different circuit,

presenting different challenges.

The Red Bull US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca

is a particularly difficult proposition.

Laguna is one of the most technically demanding

and physically intimidating circuits on the planet.

More than that,

this is the first Grand Prix on US soil since 1994.

Most of the riders have never been here before.

Among the Laguna rookies is one very special Italian.

World champion Valentino Rossi.

The Doctor, as he is known to millions of fans around the world.

As of July 2005,

the 26-year-old has won 48 Grand Prix

and four straight world titles in the premier class.

After winning five of the season's six races so far,

he's well on his way to his fifth MotoGP championship,

and well on the way to sporting immortality.

Among those who have raced at Laguna before

are three Americans looking for their first MotoGP victory.

Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden moved into MotoGP in 2003.

John Hopkins, the year before.

If ever there was a race they wanted to win, this is it.

The race before Laguna was at Assen,

a classic fast flowing European track,

almost three miles long, and this being Holland,

as flat as a pancake.

It's a place Rossi likes.

He's won three MotoGP races there,

including this one, ahead of rising Italian star Marco Melandri.

Third place at Assen was Colin Edwards' second podium of the season.

Hayden finished fourth,

Hopkins a distant 13th, his Suzuki down on power.

Hayden's Honda is widely regarded as the best bike out there,

but he hasn't made it onto the podium in any of the first six races.

This is his third season in MotoGP.

If he wants to hang onto the top spot at Honda,

he needs to start winning.

Laguna Seca is the complete opposite of Assen.

This is Californian earthquake country.

The only flat part of the 2.3 mile circuit is the dry lake bed,

which gives the place its name.

And which contains turns three, four and 11.

The other eight corners follow the contours of the hills

around the lake and range from

steeply-banked fast sweepers to hair-raising blind descents.

After Assen, the riders' thoughts turned to the American race.

Edwards, Hayden and Hopkins know Laguna well

and have won races here in other championships.

At this point, the closest Valentino Rossi has come to it

is on a video game at home.

This one is one of the hardest races for me.

It's a different type of track

compared to all the other tracks.

A lot of strange points like the Corkscrew.

As you climb the Corkscrew,

it's blind, all you see is the sky.

The Corkscrew awaits you at the top of the hill

on the south side of the circuit.

The corner's blind entry

drops into a steep left-right chicane,

which looks more suited to downhill skiing than motorcycle racing.

The big drop-off is like a roller-coaster.

Once you turn in, you gotta have the confidence

just to flick it right, and wait for the suspension to load up,

to open the throttle.

That's my favorite part of the track.

So much G-force right when you get to the bottom of the Corkscrew.

And then you just throw it into the left-hander.

The corner's so banked that you can just throw it in there completely hard.

You want to stay mid-track there, as tight as possible coming out of that corner

and then you drop down into the right-hander, that corner as well.

From the Corkscrew to turn 11, it's just an unbelievable sensation.

It's all about momentum from the top of the Corkscrew

till you put the brakes on for turn 11, keeping your speed up.

If you mess up one corner, it throws that whole section off.

The last corner, turn 11, it's pretty simple once you come out,

they really gonna wanna wheel it. I'm sure we'll be standing on the rear brake,

trying to keep the front wheel down so we can open the throttle.

Everybody talks about the Corkscrew

and how it's the masterpiece of Laguna.

Honestly, turn one is a hell of a lot more scarier than the Corkscrew.

Turn one doesn't look like much of a corner.

At over 150 miles an hour, it is.

Corkscrew, you're only in second gear.

Except at turn one, your shift's tapped.

You want to touch the rear brake,

It keeps the g-force under the front end,

keeps the front wheel down.

Coming up over the hill,

you're gonna want to pick it up and let it run all the way out

to the white line at the edge of the track while braking.

And it takes years of experience to get to the level

where you can actually feel the front end

and know exactly the fine line between keeping it upright

and sliding the front end.

Turn three catches a lot of guys off.

I'm no different.

It's just so flat.

You really have to rely on your front end.

That's gonna be where you want the best setup possible for the front end

and have as much feedback from it as soon as it slides out.

It's pretty open on the way in,

then gets tight as you exit, so that's what makes the trick.

Turn four is really fast.

That's where you make your time, in the fast corners.

Turn five is a good one.

There's a couple of different lines in there.

A lot of guys brake a little bit early,

and try to set themselves up for a good drive up the hill,

and it's really just like the pass. Turn six,

that's when it starts happening.

I've crashed there a couple of times while testing.

It's a very difficult corner.

You know, you think it's a lot more banked than it actually is.

You're carrying a lot of speed into that corner

from that little short straight you have.

It's very important to get the best drive possible

coming out of that corner, so you want to have the thing upright as soon as possible,

driving up the hill.

When you get to the bottom of the dip,

it fully loads your suspension and then it unloads

right as you're trying to accelerate, so,

there's no weight on the rear wheel.

Turn seven going up over the hill into the short left-hand kink,

you've got to know exactly where you are on the track.

It's very easy to just run wide and run straight off the track.

Laguna is everything from

fourth gear corners, to first gear corners,

uphill, downhill, off-camber, camber.

It doesn't really have a straightaway that you can relax,

and even on a normal track, it might only be two seconds,

three seconds on a straightaway,

that you get to kind of loosen the grip.

You miss that when you're at Laguna

'cause you don't have two or three seconds to loosen your grip anywhere.

Laguna's different than any other track.

Some of the new tracks now, they're all the same.

They make 'em on a computer,

and they're designed for Formula 1,

but I can tell you, this track, it definitely

wasn't designed on any computer.

It wasn't designed by a guy sitting in an office, in a chair.

It's a real racetrack with real character.

We live with these people. I see these people more than I see my family.

Big Jeffrey.

Tremblay.

Howard.

-Okay? -Doing good.

You all right? Tom?

-All right? -Yeah, not bad.

Wednesday, we spend all the morning to set up the garages.

And in the afternoon, we start to do a little bit of work on the bikes.

The crew chief, with the engineers,

they started to make a technical plan.

Each MotoGP team consists of a group of highly-skilled specialists

with clearly-defined roles.

They figure out the track together, set up the bike together,

work hand in glove for four days

until00 on Sunday.

Then it's all down to the guy on the bike.

We have a couple of rocket scientists on our team.

They process the information.

It's up to the rider, really, to kind of ask what he wants with the bike.

But at the same time, if your data guy sees anything

or your crew chief sees anything

funny on the day, he can ask you, "Hey, you know,

"you can't quite get it to full throttle in second gear.

"Does it have too much power? Too little power?

"We can do this. We can do that."

And it's definitely a team effort.

Like a pyramid, you've got the rider on the top

and a lot of slaves underneath, doing a lot of work.

And they have their individual goal of winning the championship,

or winning the race, and they get the full support of the immediate team

and the engineering group, all the way back to Yamaha in Japan.

We got some old data from Noriyuki Haga, on the Yamaha,

and some of what I remember

back in the superbike days, and we kind of put all that together.

At least it'll give us a ballpark to start from.

When we are in a new circuit,

we try to guess with some simulation program,

and try to find what can be the gearbox

and what can be the setup.

So by Thursday night, the bike is ready to go.

What is a MotoGP bike?

The rules of the sport will tell you that it's a prototype

with a four-stroke engine, cubic capacity of 990 CC,

minimum weight of 148 kilograms.

Maximum fuel load, 22 liters.

A MotoGP bike is a purebred race machine.

Every other form of motorcycle racing,

superbike, supersport and so on,

is based on production bikes,

the kind that you can buy from your local dealer.

Pick an exhaust gas.

The same thing with the lever, you see.

Yeah, titanium, carbon fiber.

Temperature sensors on them.

The only people in the world that ride a bike, anything like this

is myself, Kenny and two test riders.

Everything on the bike is nothing like a street bike.

Everything's carbon fiber, titanium, some steel bits for strength.

Everything is the lightest yet strongest possible metal.

Not only are you always testing the limit with the riders,

and finding the limit with your riding,

but also Suzuki, all the other manufacturers

are also finding the very, very limit of what they can actually use

as far as light and durability.

I never try and get into detail about how the bike works

and how it all reacts.

I just tell exactly what I feel, like,

if I'm going into a corner,

and the front just starts to slide a little bit,

and I know that I could go faster in that corner,

that's when I come in, talk to the crew chief.

The bike's sliding here. It's doing this, doing that,

and it's his job to get on the computer,

analyze it and then make the changes.

As far as the teams are concerned,

a MotoGP bike is a practical object,

a multi-adjustable tool for winning races.

You can change the suspension, the tires, the gears,

the chassis, the engine, the electronics,

download data from dozens of onboard sensors

monitoring pitch, lean, clutch pressure, brake pressure,

throttle opening, suspension, travel gear position,

wheel speed, engine braking, traction and grip.

In a sport where victory can be measured in thousandths of a second,

everybody involved is always looking for an advantage in every possible area.

The bike is constantly evolving.

The development and manufacturing costs

run into tens of millions of dollars per year.

The development's ridiculous.

How far these bikes have came in just the last year.

Now we have so much power and a lot of it's down to tires and electronics

with fly-by-wire and traction control

and all this stuff.

Now, that's the great thing about motorcycles.

At the end of the day, it's still the dude sitting in the seat

who wants to twist the throttle the hardest.

I love that smell.

Mm. Yummy.

Mr. Bayliss.

-How you doing, lady? -Hey.

Oh, be a hotshot.

-You like that old style?

-How's it going? -All right, mate. You okay?

You just get in?

What's up?

Oh, Martin, my man!

-What's happening? -Good to see you.

It feels good to be back. See all my old people

and just hanging out.

I mean, I love Laguna.

You know, weather, the people, everything about it feels right.

Boy, that sound gives me goosebumps.

I don't know about you, but,

I still love the sound, the smell, you can get at the track.

Big Hawkmeister.

-Yeah, this track's gonna be ugly. -Yeah, yeah.

Dude, the first time we went down with the car, it's like,

over there and then you go up the Corkscrew. Where is it?

Whoa, straight down.

-Yeah, you're gonna take off. -I know, going up the hill.

Valentino Rossi is the biggest star motorcycle racing has ever seen.

A once-in-a-lifetime combination of talent and charisma,

adored by fans all over the world.

Rossi races motorcycles because he loves to, not because he needs to.

He is one of the 10 highest paid sportsmen in the world,

around the $30 million a year mark,

with the likes of David Beckham and Kobe Bryant.

Unlike Rossi, they don't put their lives on the line every time they play a game.

Thank you very much.

- At- 30 on Friday morning,

the track is open for the first MotoGP practice session.

So far, the riders have only been able to look around it on foot or on scooters.

Reactions have been mixed.

To the Americans, this is home.

To the Europeans, it's a bit of a shock.

It is an old-style track.

And different than all the normal...

I prefer the other track.

The more normal style.

But it's for sure something different.

Laguna Seca was built in 1957

to host the Pebble Beach road races,

part of the Concours D'Elegance rally,

which is still held each year in the town.

The races initially took place in Pebble Beach itself.

Spectators lined the road as the cars tore past a few feet away.

In 1957, one of the drivers hit a tree and was killed.

They needed a proper circuit.

The guy that gets credit for this is a guy named Lou Gold.

He didn't even drive. He was a bartender,

head of the bartenders' union,

very community-oriented,

and he realized that this should stay.

That this Concours D'Elegance

at Pebble Beach, where he worked, was important,

So we gotta keep the racers here.

The track was funded and built by

the Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula.

SCRAMP wasn't actually a racing club,

but a volunteer group of businessmen

keen to promote the sport for the good of the local economy.

Non-racing people came out here and by accident, found this place.

It was part of a military reservation, it was part of Fort Ord,

and they got a contract to build a racetrack out here.

The general said, "Okay."

Corps of engineers said, "Sign here.

"Here's the deal. Thank you."

And that was it.

The design of the track was overseen by an architect from Salinas

named Wallace Holm, who had never designed a racetrack before.

His original plans called for the entire circuit

to be laid out around the lake bed.

He wanted to put the track

inside the hills so you could see it.

A local engineer and his tractor driver came out.

The guy with the tractor said I can't turn that sharp.

So they decided to go around the back.

That's why going they went around the back, as simple as that.

The whole thing just happened.

The track was an immediate hit with the racers.

It was a driver track. They had to work hard at it.

It was a challenge to drive the car.

My car might not be quite as good as yours,

but I might still beat you because I'm a better driver.

There was merit to that. They liked that.

The only major change to the layout was made in 1987,

with the addition of turns three and four.

Work began the day after Pope John Paul II said mass on the same piece of ground.

Right behind me, where the lake is down there,

the pope said mass right there,

because he was making a tour of the United States.

They put grandstands and they had roughly 50,000 people.

And the very next day, we tore the track apart.

We started digging it up so we could put that

three-tenths of a mile in.

So that we would qualify for world motorcycle racing.

It was not for cars. It was for motorcycles.

It was only 1.9 miles originally. Now it's 2.3.

Since then, the most significant modifications to the track

have been safety measures to accommodate ever-faster race machines.

In the months before the Grand Prix,

millions of dollars have been spent

and thousands of tons of earth moved

to create larger runoff areas around the circuit.

When things go wrong on a motorcycle at high speed,

you don't want to hit anything.

Nakano suffered no serious injuries.

A week after this crash, he finished sixth in the Catalan Grand Prix.

Yeah, on a MotoGP bike, it's gonna be pretty gnarly, no doubt.

I mean, there's some places around here that it's gonna be really tough,

like, especially the Corkscrew and also coming down the hills.

Turn one. Definitely a few places separating men from the boys.

We need to improve a little bit, the safety, for sure,

because our bike are very fast.

I'm all for safety and making it better, but,

I mean, I feel comfortable here. This is the kind of tracks I grew up on.

I've heard a couple of guys are still complaining

about a couple of little minor areas.

Yeah, if they're complaining already, that's good. That'll psych them out.

First practice on Friday is normally a one hour session,

but it's been extended to two because this is a new track for MotoGP.

The teams will have a total of five hours and 20 minutes practice.

Two hours on Friday morning, and one in the afternoon.

An hour on Saturday morning and one in the afternoon,

and 20 minutes on Sunday morning.

Between now and Sunday, the teams have to get the bike set up

as perfectly as possible for Laguna.

The first session starts out pretty wide,

getting comfortable on the track and getting the transmission right.

Finding out what gears you're going to run and which corners,

and then suspension, and then tires.

For Valentino, the first laps is to get familiar with the track,

to see how it is, to see where the bumps are.

Where is the difficult point.

We start to understand a little bit the track.

For sure, is very particular for a rider to ride well, the bike.

Laguna is a bumpy circuit.

Coming out of the bottom of the hill, you got a lot of g-force,

and it's a really, really bumpy corner.

It makes things a lot less physically demanding

if you know where the bumps are going to be.

But the whole key in Grand Prix at the moment,

you have to get the bike set up to suit you and be 100% comfortable on it.

You explain in as much detail as possible

what the bike's doing and let your engineers figure it out.

In this, Valentino is very, very good.

Very precise, very sensitive while riding the bike.

Technician can get very good feedback.

Right there is the biggest issue.

What's going on there?

Getting in there. It's just the feeling and confidence in the front.

What's the engine braking doing there?

-I mean, the engine braking feels pretty decent there. -Okay. Okay.

There's a bit of a fucking nasty bump

-just at the wrong side of the white line... -Yeah, yeah.

The most important thing at Laguna is

to keep the bike on the ground.

The track goes up, down, there's blind rises.

There's not that much grip, track's a bit dusty.

So, keeping the thing bolted to the floor

and stable so the rider has confidence is the most important thing.

Quite often, I'm watching on the circuit,

particularly when it's a new track like here at Laguna Seca,

to see what other riders are doing.

It's not just about the bike setting.

They've got to ride it properly as well.

Just listening to the bike, the Yamaha's getting like,

quite short gears. It's like, pow, pow, pow.

They're getting to top, almost fifth as well.

I wouldn't think they're using a six-speeder.

Check again.

Rossi sounded like he was using the gears.

Valentino and I had different gearing.

That's just from experience.

I've been there, you know, on superbikes for a few years.

I know what gears I need to be in.

And I came in 10 minutes after Friday practice and said,

"Okay, second gear needs to be longer.

"Third needs to be a little shorter and fourth needs to be, you know..."

His speed's very good, over the top.

I mean, that's all about stability.

Getting over the top.

Fuel's increased quite a lot.

Yeah, just found a really good line.

Maybe a little bit too high.

I don't think any rider ever looks happy in the garage.

You always want something better.

You always want to improve, and I think,

yeah, I'm never gonna have a big smile on my face

until the bike's perfect.

He's got quite an aggressive riding style,

and he likes to get the back sliding a little bit.

We'll probably end up with

probably slightly harder rear springs and things like that,

than other guys would run.

It's probably a little bit harder on rear tires, occasionally,

but Michelin generally have enough constructions and compounds

that they have something works well for him pretty much everywhere we go.

That tire's a lot better.

Usually we bring five different rear tires and two different front.

It's not just in the harder tire or the softer tire,

it's different construction and dual compound, you know,

harder on the right, softer on the left.

A 325-pound MotoGP bike

puts out close to 250 horsepower

A respectable amount for a car weighing 10 times as much.

The rider has to apply that power to the track,

through a tire whose contact patch

is about as large as a credit card.

The contact patch area of a tire

really varies on the load you put on it. At maximum speed,

more than 300 Ks per hour.

More than 80% of the load is on the rear tire.

So we cleaned up the contact patch for the rear,

going to go up. Opposite for the front.

Because you've got less load on the front

so the contact patch of the front is going to decrease.

When you're at maximum lean,

the contact patch size is smaller.

Basically, the contact patch is getting smaller and smaller.

Until you crash.

It's easy enough to find a tire which gives good grip.

But there's always a trade-off between grip and durability.

You have to choose a tire that will last the race distance.

The tiremaker's goal is to make the tire as sticky as possible

and just durable enough.

We try to make it last only the race distance.

So, if at the end of the race, analyzing the tire,

you would feel that it could have done

two or three races in a row,

then we're going to feel we've missed something.

Choose the wrong tire,

and it can spell trouble late in the race

as the rubber degrades.

That's when the tires get real loose and everything

turns into Jell-O.

It's pretty much, the bike goes from

being completely on rails

to being loose and on Jell-O.

MotoGP sees competition between tire companies

as well as between riders, teams and bikes.

Michelin supplies the tires to Honda and Yamaha.

Bridgestone to Suzuki, Kawasaki and Ducati.

They bring new types of rubber to every race.

The tire that wins this weekend

will be history in a couple of races' time.

There are three big factors of the tire.

The shape, the construction and compound.

We change everything, especially material of the compound

and the material inside of the tire.

We change that all.

If you look from the outside,

black and round, is no different,

but the inside is completely different.

That last change in tire were better.

-Okay. -The biggest thing still

is in corner exit if you're trying to spin.

Does yours feel like that?

John Hopkins' teammate at Suzuki

is Kenny Roberts Jr.

The 31-year-old Californian beat Valentino Rossi

to the world championship in 2000.

Rossi's first season in the premier class.

Roberts won three Grand Prix that year but hasn't won since.

Rossi's dominance coinciding with difficult times

for Suzuki's MotoGP project.

The Kawi...

is hitting those corners and standing and getting away.

And like, I can maybe go in with him

but I won't be able to get on the throttle at the same time.

So therefore I've got to go in a little bit easier.

-So, all those corners, those flat corners... -Yeah.

-Because if you miss the exit, you're fucked. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Teammates may share information,

but they're still in competition with each other.

Out on the track, it's every man for himself.

This track's quite difficult to set the bike

because you have very flat corners, you need grip,

and fairly compliant suspension.

And then the corners after that have got banking

and big dips in the middle and the suspension is

a lot more compressed and loaded.

You need the suspension to support that kind of load.

Particularly as you dive through the dip into the Corkscrew.

It's gonna happen to somebody at some point.

There's a lot of g-forces coming off

of the bottom of that Corkscrew.

And the bike compresses and there is nothing left. It hits the stops.

Swings it out to the right.

You're always wanting more and sometimes it ends up

throwing you over the top.

That's a hard crash.

Good thing he wasn't hurt.

Several of the teams have new engine parts to test.

Suzuki in particular is looking for improvements.

We need more power.

At the very beginning of the straightaways is

where we lose most of the time, right when you're getting it up off of the corner

and really putting the power to the ground.

With the Yamaha, I'm finding, that's where they're so good,

as they're giving you good pieces.

Everybody looks at JB and Rossi

and my team, and realistically, you have to thank the guys

that are behind the scenes and say,

"Wow, they're giving us the good stuff."

The process of developing and optimizing the bikes

goes on all year round.

Here we are at the airport again.

Seems like we spend a lot of time here.

In mid-January, the teams embark on a series of tests

in Asia, Australia and Europe.

Malaysia, Australia, back to Malaysia.

From there we go to Japan.

And we'll be testing probably 20 days

before the start of the season and even the day after the first race,

we'll be back testing Monday morning.

I mean, those are the hard yards. That's where you really

come together with your team

and find out everything you want to develop the bike.

With 17 races and as many as 10 tests each year,

the teams spend about 100 days at circuits around the world

and 50 days travelling between them.

The riders cover thousands of miles on track.

Whether they're racing or testing,

every lap is a fast one.

It has to be.

Unless you're going race pace,

you're really wasting your time and just wearing out the equipment.

So it's intense.

I'm not a techno geek type guy

but I do like to work.

I like to go to the track, I like to go testing

and I like to play around with suspension stuff and electronics

and tires and I do it for information.

The more information you gather, the more you have

to put into use, down the road. I really enjoy that.

Throughout the weekend, the staff of race control

monitor the track action on closed circuit TV.

They're in contact with marshals and medics

stationed around the track.

Laguna's onsite medical center is ready to provide

immediate treatment to injured riders.

For the first hour, Nicky Hayden struggles

with the combination of Laguna Seca and MotoGP power.

I was riding around like a squid, you know,

way off the marks.

I hadn't raced in America in three years

and definitely it was a lot of hype, a lot of build-up,

you know, some pressure.

The first session was kind of weird because

this is the first track I've ever went back to

that I used ride, like, 600 and superbikes.

When I got there on the MotoGP bike, the first session,

it just looked so different than what I remembered.

All the lines and the straightaways

felt so much shorter

and everything that's happening so much faster.

For much of the two-hour session,

John Hopkins and Troy Bayliss dominate the timesheets.

Bayliss held the track record prior to this event,

which he set in the World Superbike race in 2002.

A time of one minute 24.8.

At25, Hopkins is the fastest man on the track.

At27, he's too fast.

It was just a mistake on my part,

just, it's a blind corner,

you come up over the hill

and you always want to find the limit of where you're at.

And...

just went in there with way too much speed

and I was going straight towards the wall

and I was doing everything I could to get it back

and it just was coming back, coming back, and then just

smacked into the wall with my elbow.

Had cement marks all the way down the side of my arm

and some on the side of the bike

and luckily was able to bring it back onto the the track.

Fuck! that was close, man.

Man, I came inches from the cement.

-Yeah? -Yeah.

And like, fuck!

At the end of the first practice session,

Troy Bayliss is fastest.

The first to break his own lap record.

Nicky Hayden is second and John Hopkins, third.

Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi are fifth and sixth

behind Spanish star, Sete Gibernau.

At00, the riders are out on the track again.

It's becoming clear that Laguna is, above all,

a test of riding ability.

The bikes have so much power,

there's a limit to what the teams can do

to tailor the machine's behavior

to this tight, difficult track.

Physics is physics.

You can only accelerate so hard

to keep your front wheel on the ground

but that's basically what we're struggling with.

I mean, you'd like to be able to hit it everywhere,

but you can't. You gotta keep the front wheel down.

This was the hard part of the track.

You'd come out at turn six,

you'd never get the full throttle

all the way up that straight.

Which it looks like we'd be at full throttle.

You just carry the front wheel about half a centimeter

all the way up the hill and then just hit it down the backside.

If you got it down the backside,

then you could keep your momentum going.

But if you tapped your wheel on the top of that little rise,

then it would screw you all up.

So you're trying to get it over to the backside.

Just a timing issue.

Carry the front wheel half a centimeter in the air,

all the way up the hill at 150 miles an hour,

put it down just over the rise,

it's just a timing issue.

How do you do that?

MotoGP is full of people who live and breathe the sport.

But hardly anyone can actually do it.

One of the first things insiders will tell you

is that only a handful of men in the world

can master a MotoGP bike.

What does it take to do this?

How do you become a MotoGP star?

One thing that Rossi and

the Americans have in common

is families with racing

in their blood.

Rossi's father Graziano

was a Grand Prix rider himself

and Valentino started racing as a child.

Kenny Roberts Jr. is the son

of three-times world champion

and current MotoGP team owner,

King Kenny.

Hopkins' father Roy competed

in the Isle of Man TT

as a teenager.

John was racing by the time

he was four.

Colin Edwards started

riding bikes at three,

but he was trying to get on

them when he was one.

My dad was always

a motorcycle enthusiast.

He had a supercharged 750 Honda.

I'd disappear and everybody would be like,

"Where did Colin go?"

and I was one year old, not even be able walk yet,

and I'd be out in the garage up on top of the 750.

I was three and a half when I got my first bike.

Did all the motocross stuff.

By the time he was seven, Colin had a motocross contract.

At 14, he was ready to quit.

I'd go to school and come home and go ride for two, three hours,

come back, wash my bikes, clean the filter, wash my gear,

get a little bite of food and get 30 minutes of homework in.

It was just a job.

I was like, 4'11, weighed 80 pounds,

I was just a little pipsqueak.

All these other kids were like, 125 pounds with growing beards.

"They're going to kill me out there," he said,

"I've had enough."

Just when Edwards Sr. thought his son's motorcycle racing career was over,

Colin made an important discovery.

Asphalt.

Went to the racetrack, and a guy I used to motocross with,

Jeff Covington, he was actually road racing.

And I used to beat him pretty regularly motocrossing.

And I was like, "Wait a minute. If he can do it,

"I know I can do it."

He was only out there like, probably,

ten laps.

And he came back in and he said "Man! Dad, this is fun,

"I can go faster than all these kids who are out here."

I said, "I can see that."

And I said, "Do you want to do it?"

And he said, "Can we?"

And I said, "Hell yeah, we can do it."

"I don't how we're gonna do it, but..."

But I wanted to race with him. You know, I was...

I was always wanting to race.

His dad paid for Colin to race locally in '91.

A string of victories earned him a sponsored ride in '92.

He was on his way.

The 250 national championship in '92.

AMA superbikes, the top US category, in '93.

World superbikes in '95.

He won the World Superbike Championship in 2000 and 2002,

and moved to MotoGP in 2003.

Along the way, he found his other true love.

Alyssia.

You know, I met him and he was in high school.

He was like, "I race motorcycles."

And I was like, "Get a real job."

There was the typical high school drama, you thought,

"Oh, I'm so in love, and I can't live without him."

But it was. It was true love.

We've been married six years but together, I think, 15.

There's a theory that when you get married and have children,

you slow down.

They always say when you get married,

you lose half a second.

When you have a kid, you lose half a second.

Each kid's half a second.

I got married in '99 and I won the championship in 2000.

Found out my wife was pregnant

the beginning of 2002.

And then went undefeated after that,

and won every race and won the championship again.

So, okay, yeah. You think about your wife and kid,

but at the end of the day,

that guy in front of you is the guy you want to beat.

You're gonna do everything in your power to pass him.

The last thing on your mind is

what's back at home or what's waiting in the motor home.

-Just say "Ooh, I'm hungry."

-Hungry.

In 2005, Edwards is with Yamaha,

where his teammate is a certain Valentino Rossi.

A man he has yet to beat on the track.

For me to say Valentino's quite special is

something I've never said about anybody,

'cause I always believed that I'm

better and stronger than anybody.

But when facts are facts, you gotta face the facts sometimes.

From Agostini to Kenny Sr.,

to Doohan and Rainey.

I think you can look at all of them and say

that they were great. They were really, really great.

But that term of GOAT,

Greatest Of All Time, I think

Valentino is definitely, he's got my vote.

What does he have?

I don't know.

I wish I could tell you.

'Cause if I knew then I'd try some of it.

The guy's got a determination and a will like no other.

You know, everything he does is kinda undercover.

They don't see a lot of the stuff

that goes into what he does.

They just see him roll out of the motor home, he rolls into the garage,

he goes out and gets pole position,

goes back to his motor home.

That's kinda what everybody thinks, but,

he spends a lot of time working. It's like a kid

playing in the sandbox.

Doesn't get riled up.

Doesn't really seem like he's out there

busting his ass to...

Just seems natural, just kinda playing around.

I feel like when I'm out there and I'm riding good,

I'm busting my ass,

I'm putting everything I got into doing it.

As for the fact that Rossi has never been

to Laguna Seca before...

He'll find a way to learn the track.

He'll get behind somebody that's not paying attention

and00 on Sunday, he's gonna be there.

Doesn't really matter what track you go to,

he's still gonna be there.

Towards the end of second practice,

all the top riders have gone faster

than they did in the morning, except Rossi.

He's down in tenth.

We have some problem now.

This morning was good, but,

this afternoon we try something

quite bad for the setting, so we need to improve tomorrow.

Hopkins and Edwards are fifth and sixth.

Number 69 is number one.

Everybody wants to know why my number is 69.

So everybody wants to hear this wild kinky story.

It was my dad's number back in the day.

He was a pretty wild racer and

was upside down a lot in fences and gravel traps.

They say they always knew who it was

even when his bike was upside down.

Racing's been something that's been in my family's blood.

It's always been a family thing.

We didn't really go to Disneyworld

or you know, to a waterpark.

We went to the track and rode our bikes.

Nicky Hayden inherited his racing genes

from his mother as well as his father.

My dad used train thoroughbred racehorses.

He raced and she raced

and he joked that he was always trying to get

the bloodline right.

Said, "I'm gonna get me a fast girl."

I've raced for 20 years and my wife's raced for five years.

My wife's a lot faster than I was.

I rode a 125 Honda. On dirt.

It was powder puff and it was all girls.

It's my brother's show over here, so...

I've run 1-2 in a 600 championships.

Nicky's older brother Tommy and younger brother Roger Lee

are both competing at Laguna in the AMA National Championships

which Nicky won before moving to MotoGP.

Tommy is reigning US supersport champion,

with Roger Lee just behind him in the rankings.

It looks like things have worked out for the family.

You always think about it, you know.

Wouldn't it be nice? That's what they would love to do.

But, you know, this is such a hard thing.

And what made it really good was we did it as a family.

Friday night, got off school, we would take off

in like Texas, let's say a thousand miles, I'd drive all night,

and get there. They're sleep all night,

and get up and then would practice, say, Saturday and race Sunday.

Sunday afternoon,00, I'd take off, drive back.

and wake 'em up in time

take a shower and go to school on Monday.

We raced at least 35 times a year.

And sometimes 40 times a year. So it's not many weekends off.

People thought I used to make them race.

"Oh, their daddy pushes them, makes them race."

I had to make them brush their teeth,

make them take a bath.

Wasn't like I had to make them race.

I wanted to race against the best guys in the world.

That's where I've wanted to be since I could talk.

"Chasing the dream." Maybe five years old.

It's gotta come from yourself.

You've gotta be the one to make the sacrifices,

and be the one ready to hang it out,

and get it done.

When Nicky was about 11 years old,

we went to a race that wasn't but 15 miles from here

and he made about $1200.

And we couldn't believe it.

I mean, getting paid to do this stuff.

There wasn't many of those.

Most times, it was Mama and Papa.

Every dollar, 95 cents went to racing.

It's all a part of paying your dues.

If you don't go do that, you're not going to be in MotoGP.

The financial tide turned for Nicky

on his 16th birthday.

He was old enough

and good enough to be offered a contract

in the AMA National Championships.

They're gonna furnish all the bike's parts.

Bikes are gonna show up.

And all we had to do was get ourselves there.

It's like Santa Claus.

Five years and countless race wins later,

Hayden was number one in the USA

at the age of 21.

The following year, 2003, he was off to MotoGP.

John Hopkins is the youngest of the MotoGP riders at Laguna.

Just 22, but already in his fourth year in the world championship.

I just knew I wanted to do it.

Parents never said, "Oh, you've got to go Grand Prix,

"You've got to go Grand Prix.

"You got to do this,

"if you wanna be a Grand Prix rider."

Stuff like that. It was just, basically, one thing at a time.

-How're you doing? -Good, how are you?

Actually, I have met you before.

Five years ago or something, when you were a rider for

Yoshimura Suzuki.

-John's team, right? -John Ulrich, yeah.

When John was 11,

his future as a racer was thrown into doubt

by the loss of his father after a long illness.

The lifeline Hopkins needed

came from AMA team owner, John Ulrich,

who discovered 1993 world champion, Kevin Schwantz,

and saw similar promise in Hopkins.

At the age of 18, he delivered,

winning the 2001

AMA Formula Xtreme Championship.

Hopkins made no secret of his Grand Prix ambitions.

And in the same year, Ulrich secured a test for him

with the Red Bull Yamaha Grand Prix team.

In 2002, Hopkins found himself where he wanted to be,

racing in the world championships.

But in the years that have followed,

the results he dreamed of have not materialized.

Unlike Edwards and Hayden,

he has yet to stand on a MotoGP podium.

Few in the Grand Prix paddock doubt his ability.

But a combination of inferior machinery

and injuries have undermined his efforts.

He's fully fit at Laguna.

But 2005 began the way no rider wants.

In rehab, after major surgery.

It wasn't because of a MotoGP injury.

The operation was to remove a titanium rod from his femur,

the legacy of a car crash a decade earlier.

And also to take out some metalwork in his ankles,

which he broke in a Motocross accident in the winter of 2003.

DR.John suffered through a major injury.

He recovered very rapidly.

The resiliency of these guys

is one thing that I am always amazed of.

They have a phenomenal pain threshold.

Things that would bother a normal person,

doesn't faze these guys.

It's been over 20 years of experience

that I've watched this.

And I know what the average person requires

for something similar,

who gets in a one-time motor vehicle accident but breaks his collarbone.

Hopkins, come in casual, just the way he is,

and, "Hey, get it done.

"I don't have time, you know? I got to go."

And he proved it.

And he was so fast, that it just makes your job so easy.

I think Nicky had a collarbone fracture

that he was recovering from.

I'm healthy. I mean,

for the most part, I mean, sure I have some things that...

You know, still hurt.

The year before, I got hurt in Italy,

I was out training, riding supermotard,

and broke my collarbone and my knee...

Man, that was kind of not the most fun day of my life.

They opened me up,

put a plate and seven screws in my collarbone,

and I rode Japan two weeks later.

It didn't feel too good.

But once you get on a bike, then it goes away.

While Hayden was struggling with his knee

and shoulder injuries in Japan in '04,

Hopkins was fit

and looking forward to a strong race

after qualifying in the front row.

Loris Capirossi's wayward Ducati

dashed his hopes at the first corner.

I broke three ribs.

I had a foot peg go straight up my back side.

Gave me eight stitches.

I got in to the medical center,

they said, "Oh, what problems do you have?"

I said, well, it's just my ribs.

And they're like, are you sure nothing else hurts?

I said, no, I'm all right. Everything's fine.

I sit up in a complete puddle of blood,

and they go, "Uh, I think you have a little more than a scratch."

These bikes ain't toys.

And there is times you're gonna crash,

so, I mean, you need to be able to

you know, take a good lickin' sometimes.

DR.It's like Darwin's theory,

survival of the fittest.

I think the injury thing selects them out.

Kids that can heal faster,

and recover faster and have higher pain thresholds

end up going to the higher levels of motorcycle racing.

They're extreme focus athletes.

They're a totally different breed than the rest.

It takes a lot to get on that bike,

go 200 miles an hour and stay focused like that.

Every movement counts.

DR. If you think of the risks, and what they're doing...

If they push it too hard,

yeah, it could cost them their life.

The protective equipment the riders wear,

and the track side run-off areas

and air fences help.

But the best form of protection is staying on the bike.

Rossi and Edwards each fell just once in '04.

Rossi has only paid one visit to the Fremont clinic

in recent years, with a fractured thumb.

Just about every year in MotoGP,

you know, knock on wood,

I've been fit. I've never been a crasher in the first place.

Through 11 years of young Motocross,

I think I only had two broken bones.

That's not really normal. Just never been a crasher.

I think I knew it hurt.

-- How many to go? -- One.

How long did it go?

-Couple of miles. -Remember, nice and slow.

Six races into the season, and six months after the operation,

John Hopkins is in the best shape of his MotoGP career.

MotoGP, I wanna be as strong as possible

and yet as light as possible.

The week before a race, when I'm cycling,

I truly visualize every corner on that track

and what my braking markers are,

where to get on the throttle, what lines to take,

who I'm gonna be riding against, where I wanna be at,

it all goes through my head.

A lot of racing motorcycles is all in your head.

It's just mind over matter.

Training also helps you get ready

to be able to fight when you get in a battle,

and the pace is hot.

I'm looking for any edge I can get.

Gotta learn how to push your body. If you can push yourself saying,

"I know I can do this. I know I can win this race,"

I'm gonna go in that corner a little bit faster.

There's a huge mental component

to racing, huge.

Valentino Rossi's the one,

mentally, he has the ability to,

whatever it is, visualize the track better,

instinctively make the turn when he needs to.

It's all the intangible things.

It's not like something like if you go home,

and I say, "Do 20 push-ups everyday,"

you'll be GP champion next year.

That's too easy. It's the intangible things.

Like they say, you either have it or you don't.

Preparation, training, enhance one's potential.

You have to do everything and have the genetics, so to speak.

I guess it was '99 I got the bicycle.

Got the bicycle somewhere.

It's over there in the corner tucked away.

Did the 20 miles a day,

get up at30 in the morning and trained,

and went to the gym. Fogarty still kicked my ass in superbikes.

So, I thought, "Screw that. That was a lot of work for nothing."

And then, the next year I basically did the opposite.

I just had fun, going out on the water and wakeboarding

and motocrossing, and playing lots of golf.

And went out there and won the championship.

So, at that point I just kind of decided it's in your head. And it is.

This is our go-kart building.

We got about 12 go-karts in here, and we just get crazy.

Sometimes, if it gets too easy, then we do no brakes.

So you have to basically steer on the throttle only

and then we'll do one hand, no brakes.

And we kinda mix it up, make it fun.

I was always strong. I always was doing something, I was active.

And I never really felt mentally, like...

I was missing anything.

Like, I had to have that physical training to be mentally fit.

You know, it kind of works hand in hand.

Whenever you do train, you kind of set yourself up for failure in a way, as well,

because if you miss a day,

then you go to the trainer, "Ah, I missed Tuesday.

"I really should've done this, I should've done that."

And you already have that doubt in your head.

So I just discount all that bullshit.

We stay in shape. You're on the bike,

I don't know how many days a year it would be.

Probably one in three. You stay fit, can't help but stay fit.

Whenever I'm working, I'm working.

Whenever I'm not working, I'm here having a good time playing with my family.

You promised me you'd win this race.

I did? All right.

I don't wanna let nobody down.

I think Nicky's got a lot of pressure on him.

What's happening, girl?

And I hope he just doesn't overdo it.

'Cause he's got a lot of the Americans pulling for him.

We're rooting for you.

All right. Thanks, girl.

A couple of months before the race,

People Magazine named Hayden one of America's 50 hottest bachelors.

Then he took part in a dating game on theToday Show.

They brought a couple of us in, a country singer,

and an NFL football player.

Hayden won.

I got a hard time from my boys back home.

They let me hear about that.

We'd be eating lunch or something,

a hot girl will be there.

"Go on, go talk to her. You're the hottest bachelor."

But I don't know. Didn't seem to help too much.

I didn't seem to see any raise in the numbers.

Some of these countries we go to really have some beautiful girls.

It's a shame we don't go to Brazil anymore.

A lot of talent in Brazil, that's for sure.

But to be honest, and I ain't just saying this, lying,

I don't want to be a paddock playboy

and be out chasing honeys all the time.

You know, I wanna win races.

The pressure on Hayden has been building for two and a half years.

When I got to Europe, new kid coming in from America,

you get a good ride date.

They want to see you fail.

Maybe I've got a little chip on my shoulder,

now I want to prove 'em wrong.

I remember when he first started out in MotoGP,

I kept telling him, I said, "Hey, where are you at?

"I didn't see you on TV. You know, you gotta be in the top three

"to be on TV."

He said, "I'm trying, I'm trying."

Them people pay us big money, they expect you to be on tv, be on the box, win.

He's been used to winning most of his life.

I don't think it's cutting it that Nicky hasn't been on the podium yet this year,

with the machine that he's running.

I like the guy, enjoy his company,

and we are friends but I think he's had enough time to

regularly be winning.

After Friday's three hours of practice,

then top 10 riders are less than a second apart.

It doesn't sound like much but at 150 miles an hour,

a second is over 50 yards.

Lose a second a lap and you'll be a mile behind after 32 laps.

The race is 32 laps.

Rossi is a second down on the fastest man, Hayden.

Between yesterday and today, I have a lot of problems.

It's very difficult to arrive at the right setting in this track.

This track is particular, compared to the other tracks around the world.

Like, a little bit worse than before,

too much push on the tire.

And also, another thing, important.

For 36 here, go up, brake, on the track, down...

My new plan is to wait because I don't feel the result.

-Did you change something on the front, too? -Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't think either end felt as good.

It felt like when I went over the hill, turn one,

it got too loose. When I went up

it felt like it kicked it. What did you change exactly?

There's no such thing as a perfect motorcycle.

In some places it's really good, in other places it's still not perfect,

but if you make it really good in another place, it messes it up somewhere else.

Also, on the Corkscrew,

when I went like this, on the top it felt

-real light in the back. -Okay.

It didn't feel like the change even helped the chatter.

Chatter's a mysterious thing.

When you get it, how you get it.

Different ways affecting it, but basically,

it's just where the track has rolling bumps,

the suspension is not following the bumps.

It feels miserable. Can't carry good corner speed with it,

tires aren't planted.

We're just trying to fix that without the detriment

of losing grip or anything anywhere else.

Obviously, suspension's probably the biggest way

and the rider, you know, how you release the clutch,

how you feed the clutch out.

A lot of times you actually open the throttle back up

to put a little bit of tension on the chain and the swing arm

and that helps take away chatter.

With 20 minutes pf practice left,

the teams are still trying new tires,

not necessarily because the riders want to.

We don't have enough for this afternoon?

That's 'cause you need to compare in race conditions.

What are we doing with the old one, though?

Why another one? Why more?

We can start with the new one but we're not gonna learn anything.

We're their test riders.

They have 20 different tires that they want information on

and if you don't test it they're not gonna get any information on it.

They're always gonna be pushing "Test this tire, test this one, test this one."

And basically, the rider comes to a point where,

"Hey, I've tested ten tires, I've found the one that I want.

"You know, let's just roll with that."

It can come to that sometimes.

There is no magic setup. That's the thing.

You still gotta ride the bike,

and when the light goes out on race day,

you gotta dig in and fight with whatever you got.

At the end of the day, bike preparation is only half the story.

Rider preparation is the other half.

With practice and repetition,

the physical input involved in riding a MotoGP bike

flat out around any given circuit become automatic.

Like a musician mastering an intricate solo,

or a gymnast performing a complex routine,

the rider is not consciously thinking about his actions.

At the best of times, he enters the altered state of "the zone,"

where the laws of physics and mortality no longer seem to apply.

It just clicks. Everything works,

you don't have any complaints.

You get in the zone and you just feel like nobody can stop you.

That's what it takes, you know, to win races.

And once you get in that zone you become superhuman.

Sometimes, you'll lose the front,

whereas normally, you might go, "Whoa, that was close."

When you're in the zone, it's no big deal.

You just pop it up off the knee and keep going around the corner,

you don't lose any time.

The weirdest things can pop into your mind, not about riding.

Then you're going flat out and the focus is just 100%,

yet you're able to just concentrate on other things.

What I'm gonna have for dinner, what time the flight is the next morning,

what I'm gonna do the next week in England.

When that happens, that's when I'm always riding the best of my ability.

At the end of Saturday morning practice,

Hopkins is up to third

behind Bayliss and Hayden.

Bayliss makes a last minute push for the top spot.

Edwards is sixth, Rossi fifth.

He's now the fastest rookie on the track.

Laguna is filling up.

Fans, friends, family, celebrities,

everyone's here.

I got my whole crew. Both of my sisters are here,

and my mom, my dad.

Nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, mom, sister,

high-school friends, everyone that's in my family here in America.

We had probably 30 people out there,

probably more than that. It was a little intense.

At Laguna, Alyssia's pregnant with the Edwards' second child.

If it's a boy, will he be a racer?

The main event on Saturday is the qualifying session,

which determines how the riders line up on the grid for the race.

Big target now, get towards the front of the grid

because I think around here with the flowing nature of the track,

and the S bends it's gonna be real tough to pass.

But when you qualify the bikes in the first couple of rows,

you get away with the front guys.

Some tracks, you can start second or third row, it's no drama.

But here, you need to be on that front row.

I'm rooting for Nicky, but last night in the restaurant,

we met Valentino Rossi.

He's a really cool guy, so...

kinda pulling for both of them.

Come on, John! Go!

Hopper!

Colin Edwards!

Colin, all the way. He's been holding back all day,

little low on the board, but he'll be there race time.

As much as I love Rossi,

I'd like to see the Hayden guy get a podium place, too.

The mamas feel nervous every time they race.

What I think about the whole time is,

you know, like, for him to be safe.

It's never over with until that checkered flag drops.

Come on, where's my boy?

Here he comes! Here he comes!

Never really got to see the family,

but you know in the back of your head that they're there.

I think it's crazy that the speeds they're coming down the Corkscrew,

but it doesn't surprise me

because he's always been like this

and he's always raced motorcycles.

For the first half of the session,

the teams keep working on the race setup.

The real action is in the last 20 minutes

when they put on the super sticky qualifying tires.

They're made to give the riders the maximum potential.

But on the other hand, we cannot keep that maximum potential for a long time.

They'll be able to last only one lap.

Qualifying tires are fun.

They're only good for one lap but with that one lap

you can carry so much more corner speed.

Basically, with the qualifying tires,

you don't do anything much different

except get on the gas a lot harder and earlier.

Whenever you hit it, you hit it hard. But most of the time,

that qualifier will stick. But they have a bad habit every now and then of flicking you.

A lap consists of just closing your eyes

and just hoping for the best, really.

Come on, baby, go!

Oh, my. He's flying.

Oh, he's dreamed about this. Come on, do it John-John.

I think here, we had three qualifiers if I remember right.

Went out with the first one and it was terrible.

Hardly went faster than I did on my race tires.

I put that second one on and when I got to about turn three,

it felt good.

I stopped after my first qualifying tire.

I see the lap time of Nicky was not so bad.

But with the second qualifier we did a very good job.

It was an awesome feeling.

I can't even tell you how cool it is to see all the flags and banners.

You know, last couple of years, I see all these guys at their home track

and I think, "Man, how cool that must be."

Saturday, the Kentucky Kid on top.

Colin Edwards' qualifying run was spoilt by a mix-up in the garage.

The new front tire he needed went missing.

Just a wrong call with some tire stuff there at the end,

and left an old front on.

I was lucky to pull out the lap I did.

There's a short practice session on Sunday morning,

one last chance to make adjustments.

At the end of the session the riders stop out on the track

to practice their race starts.

Many of the teams are experimenting with electronic launch control.

But the new technology doesn't seem to be too reliable.

We've done start after start

and we're trying to get this bike to get off the line really good.

Valentino will tell you the same, we had a couple bad starts.

He was always such a good starter.

Good start, and get out front right away,

but in MotoGP he's just been having hell with it.

Getting them off the line is definitely hard.

You can't just smoke the clutch 'cause they're not really designed for that.

I mean, the first gear in the bike is designed

to run 70 mile an hour or something.

Launch control was coming in,

and there's definitely some teams running that sort of thing.

But we still pretty much do the old fashioned way,

the hardest thing is just to

try to get the power down

without the thing wanting to stand up and wheelie.

- Between the warmup and the race at- 00,

the riders faced the longest three and a half hours of the weekend.

Right after morning warmup to the start of the race

is the most intense time.

I don't like to be bothered and then just do my regular pre-race warmup.

I listen to some good music.

Being relaxed is the most important thing there is to do.

Start getting anxiety and it's just gonna take a toll on your body.

I mean, I don't mind being around people but I definitely

ain't in no mood to make no small talk.

Once we get close to the start, do some stretching.

I have a stationary bicycle in my motor home.

I normally ride that to warm up

and get my heart rate going a bit.

I'm the opposite.

I don't know if it's a form of meditation or what it is,

but I get trance-like or sleepy.

I think it's just to calm down.

Once I get on the bike I'm ready, though.

While the MotoGP riders are in their motor homes,

Hayden's brother Tommy is out on the track, leading the Super Stock race,

about to lap some slower riders.

Everything was going really good.

Oh! Contact with the number 811, Skye Gerard

out of Palmdale, California,

sends the leader into the gravel.

Tumbling almost to the air fence,

Tommy Hayden taking a big spill.

Then Tommy gets hurt.

The thing you worry about Nicky, is this gonna affect Nicky's ride.

You worry, is Tommy okay?

My brother broke his hand.

I was so bummed for him. He actually helped me before the race

to, you know, quit thinking about the start and everything else.

And before the race I was actually quite relaxed.

I knew Nicky was gonna be strong and I knew Valentino would be strong.

Those are two things I was certain of.

At the same time, Bayliss had actually put together quite a few good laps.

I had raced him there on superbike

so I knew he wasn't good at that track.

Bayliss had been there before so I don't know.

I mean, there was a few guys that just had a question mark.

You didn't really know what the day was gonna bring.

I knew how important it was for him.

He had so much pressure to do really well for that race.

It was a little scary.

I was in the garage because it's just so much more intense in there.

The team's in there, everybody's in there, the reactions, it's awesome.

Colin's race tires were better than most.

I was thinking he was gonna fight for the win.

You know, after you've done it for 13 years,

you don't really get butterflies until

before the start of the race, you know, sitting on the grid.

If you weren't nervous it wouldn't mean nothing.

60,000 people, live TV all over the world.

I mean, if that don't give you goosebumps, you got issues.

And then you get these stars like Brad Pitt on the starting line,

telling you "good luck," and "you're on pole,"

"you've been fastest all week."

I didn't wanna choke then.

I felt the pressure.

I was just feeling good, I was pumped.

I wanted to get the race going and I knew I could ride to my full ability.

I was healthy, I was fit.

It's game time. When they pull the tire warmers off,

when they fire their engines, that feeling is what I live for.

Everyone around you has done everything they can.

Now it's time for you to go out and do what you have to do.

Alone.

Before the start, the riders go out on a single warmup lap.

One last chance to check everything's okay with the bikes and the track.

I normally go pretty hard on my sighting lap,

to get the tires up to temperature,

get the brakes up to temperature,

get your mind moving fast.

For a minute, it's eerily quiet on the start line.

Kathleen and Jenny and I,

we were watching Earl.

My daughter, she's an RN, nurse,

and she said, "Just make sure, Dad, you remember to keep breathing."

We was more worried about him than we were worried about Nick.

'Cause I didn't know if Earl's gonna have a stroke or something.

And they're expecting you to win. I mean, these people, GasUp, Repsol,

it's about winning. It's not about "Hey, I got third."

or "I got whatever".

So it's just so big for Nick.

I knew how badly he wanted it, how hard he was working.

I'm just like, hurry up and get it over with.

You know, we'll go home and watch it on TV.

Hayden gets the dream start.

Heading into turn two, he's already opened up a gap on Troy Bayliss.

I'm just focused. You don't feel nothing,

see nobody, hear nothing.

It's just you and the track. That's a good feeling right here.

Hayden's dream is Edwards' nightmare.

I had a shitty start.

I remember coming up over turn one,

and I had a Ducati on one handle bar,

like wedged in between a Ducati and a Kawi or something.

I was sandwiched. They were just carrying me over the hill.

I thought, "Oh, shit. This could turn out bad."

From fifth in the grid he's down to seventh at second corner.

Rossi is third behind Bayliss, who got a great jump from the second row.

Unfortunately, Bayliss stuck in front of me

and at the beginning was very slow.

And straight away, I lost one second from Nicky on the first lap.

Going into turn four, Bayliss runs wide and Rossi dives through.

I ended up getting off the line pretty well.

You know, at the start of the race I was just blocking.

I just wanted to stay up in the front lead group

and try not to lose any positions

in any stupid places.

Hopkins is up to fifth behind Biaggi,

ahead of Checa and Edwards.

You know, Hopper knows the track really well.

And he was gonna be hard to pass, doesn't matter what bike he was riding.

And Checa on the Ducati, Ducati was lightning fast.

I knew it was gonna be hard.

Heading up the hill towards the Corkscrew,

Edwards' first lap goes from bad to worse.

Alongside him, Checa moves left

slowing Edwards' approach to the corner.

At the same moment, Gibernau comes flying up on Checa's right.

Then Sete went by

inside of the Corkscrew, I got a bit screwed up.

Now I'm really pissed off.

Thinking about slitting my wrists.

Gibernau and Checa try to outbrake each other into turn 10.

They run wide and Edwards nearly rams the off-course Checa.

Whoa, that was a bit close.

In turn 11, Gibernau pushes Checa wide

and Edwards follows him past the Ducati.

Behind him, Marco Melandri

tries to get past Alex Barros on the brakes.

Edwards is oblivious.

His eye's on the bikes in front.

Obviously the pack, now they're a good

15 bike lengths in front of us.

And I saw Nicky starting to check out.

I thought, "Oh, gosh, I'm just making it really hard for myself."

I came around the first lap

and seen my board plus point seven

and, man, I had a smile on my face

'cause I knew I had something for them.

Didn't know who got a good start, who got what,

you know, I mean, I was still nervous.

His father is nervous too,

worried that Nicky might have jumped the start.

Most time one guy don't get that kind of a jump.

I was hoping it wasn't too good.

His other worry is the man behind Nicky.

You don't want Valentino, have to try to hold him off,

seven time world champion or something.

You know what I mean?

He's always got a little something extra.

You can never count Rossi out.

I expected him to be the toughest challenge

and I know he don't like losing.

I tried to follow him,

but today he is very strong

and on some part of the track he is faster than me.

I didn't wanna let him get too close to see where I was fast,

some of my lines and some other things that I was doing good.

There was a few things that I learnt

from following Doug Chandler around there back in the day

when I rode 600, like getting through Rainey Curve.

There's one bump there

and that's the same line I have used since I was 16.

Back in seventh, Edwards is making plans.

The first lap, you get sorted out.

You decide what your next move is.

Just try to line up the next guy in front of you, playing chess.

I'm kinda the sit and stock

and kind of, plan my attack.

At this point behind Sete,

I knew he was having a bit of trouble all weekend.

Biaggi and Bayliss are fighting for third.

Hopkins is close, but he's not too happy.

Our bike handled really well.

We were just so down on horsepower,

we were having to ride so hard in the corners

to try and make up everything we lost in the straightaways.

Heading up the hill to the Corkscrew,

Edwards makes his move.

That line-up there in the Corkscrew

is something I held in the back pocket pretty much all weekend.

I didn't really wanna show anybody.

Basically, you can brake straight,

you do lose a bit of momentum,

but once you get in front of the guy

there's nothing he can do anyway.

Just ahead of Edwards, Hopkins is getting frustrated.

See, I was trying everything I could

to get by Biaggi and Bayliss right here.

I mean, I'm inside, I'm outside,

I was seriously being held up right there

and I could see Valentino getting away,

so, I mean, I was, I was really frustrated.

The only thing I could have done

is just completely nail him, and T-bone him,

and that's something I was willing to do.

I didn't wanna take myself out.

As Biaggi and Bayliss accelerate away from him,

the writing is on the wall for Hopkins.

All the ground he's made up through the corners,

he loses down the straight.

That's pure horsepower right there and there it is.

Edwards now has Hopkins in his sights.

He passes him on the power out off turn four.

The first couple of guys I passed might have been not so difficult,

but I've got Biaggi who's been there before,

who carries lots of corner speeds, brakes hard.

Got Bayliss in front of him

who is a bear around this track.

He's hard to pass.

I was kinda struggling trying to pick out

how am I gonna pass these guys

and get by them quickly.

Because at the same time they weren't running a bad pace,

it was just enough to slow me down mid-corner

and kinda messing me up.

And then up in the distance, you got Valentino and Nicky.

First off, I'm gonna have to ride my ass off to even get up there.

Half-way through lap four,

Bayliss and Biaggi start tripping each other up.

These guys start playing with one another.

I almost hit Troy here,

Max went a bit wide and made a mistake, slowed Troy up,

that kinda left the door open for me.

Now I'm thinking,

really good, Christmas came early.

You know? I got buzzed on it one time,

so, now I just put my head down.

As Edwards goes through,

Gibernau seizes the chance to push Biaggi aside.

Edwards leads the pack down the hill

with Gibernau behind him

continuing his all-out attack.

As far as Edwards is concerned, though,

he's on his own now.

I'm out by myself, me against the track.

There was no conserving tires.

Those rules all went out the window

once I got a bad start

and found that I was gonna have to make up a lot of ground.

Anything and everything,

whatever you got, I was thrashing all of it,

bike, engine, bouncing off the limiter right

just before you come into that corner.

Just trying to squeeze every little ounce of everything.

Up at the front,

Hayden is monitoring the gap to Rossi.

Rossi, a lot of times he don't like to lead,

so, when I've seen him back there

I knew that he might just be waiting till the last few laps

and I was gonna have to be ready to hang it out.

Once I started being fastest, fastest at the end of the first day,

second day fastest,

and then to get on pole by a pretty big gap.

If I didn't ran that race I was gonna look like a choke artist.

I didn't like to think I buckle under the pressure

and I didn't wanna buckle that weekend for sure.

Lap nine,

Hayden first, Rossi second, Edwards third.

Gibernau and Checa have got past Hopkins.

He's now eighth, wondering how to counter-attack

the Ducati in front of him.

The Ducati is probably the hardest bike to pass

because of its sheer brunt horsepower.

Checa does him a favor.

It was unfortunate for him, but it was very fortunate for me.

He just got in there a little too hot

and tried to make up a little too much ground,

and broke a little too hard.

Just too much front brake.

Checa's fall put Hopkins seventh,

behind Troy Bayliss,

a rider he's held in high regard

ever since he saw the Australian

racing at Laguna Seca in 2001

in the World Superbike Championship.

I remember going up to Troy Bayliss when he was racing World Superbike

and I was there racing supersport.

I said, "Man, I love your style."

'Cause he always went really well here on the World Superbike.

So, it was good racing against him,

but dammit, I wanted to beat him.

I was numb. I was completely numb.

I couldn't feel anything in my body.

Just aggression and adrenaline,

that was the only thing I was running on.

Like I was looking at the devil right in front of me.

It felt good. That's why you race.

It's for the adrenaline, for the aggression, the excitement.

Right here I'm just trying everything I can

and I knew I could be faster than him if he wasn't in front of me.

Bayliss was riding to his maximum, blocking,

riding way in the insides,

just wasn't a possibility to get by him.

With your body hanging over the bike,

it's a really wide object,

with the width that Laguna is, being quite tighter than most tracks.

Just left, right, left, right,

just back and forth like that.

It is one of the most hardest places to overtake.

Nicky was going off in the sunset,

so at this moment,

Valentino was just another obstacle

that I had to get around

and he is by no means an easy person to pass.

I spent a couple of laps, I think, stalking,

just to see where he had a weak point,

where I felt like I was faster,

where he might have been a bit faster.

He was fairly fast,

one, two, three, four, the flat corners.

He just pulled a little gap after those corners.

I knew from this area

up to a little bit past the Corkscrew I was pretty quick.

I fight with Colin very much.

I know he come in from behind.

Here I quite slow, so I think he don't overtake me straight away.

I start reeling him in a bit here.

And then once I got up here, I just said,

"Now is the time."

I don't expect when he arrive he overtake me at the Corkscrew.

I broke really deep and I got in there a bit hot

and missed that apex just a tiny bit,

but at the same time he couldn't turn in on me.

I know Valentino's style, his character,

he's gonna try a counter-attack pretty soon.

At the same time, my biggest concern was,

"Now is the time to put your head down

"and do everything you can to catch Nicky."

Sure enough, Rossi hits back.

A little too hard.

That right there is a typical Laguna mistake.

Guy in front of you kinda drags you into turning too a bit hot

and you run a bit wide.

He missed that apex there as well.

I lost a little bit anyway.

I'm not precise, and my reading is not very good.

He'll tell you, you know, he makes a lot of mistakes,

but he's just really good at recovering.

He can recover a mistake

and hardly lose any time.

This lap, obviously, he lost some time.

Right now, I'm just focusing on that top gap,

minus one point eight, minus one point six,

which is the distance from me to Nicky.

Okay, here he's coming back slow, bit by bit,

but is there enough time?

The best part of the race was doing what I'm doing right now.

Putting the laps in and I was catching up to Nicky.

The funnest thing is just clicking off

as perfect the laps as you can.

When you connect every dot

and you have the line that you want,

to me that's fun.

Catching up to Nicky, I definitely strung a few together.

That was the best part of the race for me.

About a lap after that was the worst part of the race

when Nicky responded and pulled the gap back out

a couple of laps in a row.

And, uh...

Oh, man, come on.

We kinda knew what he could run

and we knew that he had another

almost a half a second in him.

And I was sitting over with the crew chief when Colin kinda got up to him just a little,

they signaled to him, you know, with the pit board

and he immediately went couple of laps so he could get back out.

Couple of times the gap would come down to those guys

and I was able to always answer the attack and pull it back out.

It's never comfortable when you got them boys breathing down your neck.

So much stuff can happen. A lap rider,

tires go away,

sometimes he's hard on tires

more than the other people.

The rider with the tire problem

is not Nicky Hayden, but Colin Edwards.

I didn't really think it was a gamble,

but I did choose a softer tire

knowing that it would be good in the beginning

and maybe suffer a little bit in the end.

That's exactly what happened.

He responds, kinda, knocks the wind out of my sail,

but at the same time

the rear really goes away.

Once you lose the rubber then you lose the grip

and that happens in every race.

New tires are always better.

Seven laps from the end,

Hopkins is locked in a four-way battle.

Bayliss ahead of him,

Tamada and Nakano behind.

I was in a big group there

so I knew there were people right behind me I wasn't worried about.

I was just concentrating on the people ahead of me.

At this stage of the race

it was like, "Unless these guys make a mistake,

"this is where I'm gonna finish."

Behind him, Makoto Tamada has his own ideas

about where Hopkins is going to finish.

That's a blind corner and to come over the inside,

Tamada made a pretty ballsy move.

He went a little kamikaze right there.

You know, hats off to him,

but at the end of the day, damn it, I wanted to beat him.

That's where the focus comes into the race,

most importantly is at the end of the race.

Tires are worn, body is worn, the mind is worn.

I was extremely pissed off.

I ran wide there and missed the apex there.

They got away a little bit.

It happens. You get a little hot-headed.

When you try too hard, that's when you start making mistakes

and run wide,

or slip the rear, get the rear spun up a little too much.

You just wanna try and stay as smooth as possible

and still have that same aggression.

A few people asked to talk to me during the race,

but I wouldn't dare say anything during a race

because you could say something

and the next lap they could be on the ground.

You know, and so, I wanna wait after the checkered flag.

Edwards is not giving up.

Then I put a second surge in there

towards the end of the race.

The only thing you can really do is just

keep trying to apply the pressure

and force them into a mistake.

It's not wise just to

drop off the face of the planet and let him go.

It's no parade. It's intense the whole 45 minutes.

You let up, you're gonna go backwards,

so, it's a dogfight the whole way.

When they come off of the last corner before they got to the finish line,

and I could hear the sound of Nicky's bike,

but I got to where I couldn't even look.

I just... I knew on my stopwatch

at a certain second

that bike would be there.

And I was just hoping I never not hear that sound.

Eventually, I knew his sound. The Honda was different

than the two Yamahas

'cause Colin and Valentino were second and third

and they made a different sound.

And to tell you the truth, I only watched

when he'd come past me, just a little distance

'cause I just couldn't watch.

I'm struggling hard here.

Pushing as hard as I can do,

but I can't seem to get out of my own shadow.

I'm exiting the corners and spinning up,

and trying to keep it in line,

and at the same time,

I did not know

Valentino was coming.

In the closing laps,

Rossi's focus is absolute.

While Edwards has been spinning and sliding on his worn tires,

the world champion has been smooth and aggressive.

His choice of a harder tire

working in his favor late in the race.

I come around the last corner thinking,

"Okay, we've got one more lap to go."

I look over at my pit board and it says,

"Plus point five."

The last time I remember it was like, two point five seconds

I had on Valentino or two seconds.

So, now I'm thinking,

"Did I read that wrong?

"Did that say point five or plus five seconds?"

So, I look over...

And I saw a

track full of yellow motorcycle behind me.

I say, "Yeah, I'm here."

Oh, man, not the last lap.

Uh, I didn't want this.

So, now it was...

I was doing everything I could,

push as hard as possible

to keep him behind me.

The last couple of laps I was trying to stay focused,

but I was thinking about when I was, you know, a kid.

My mom and dad, just what they had done.

I can honestly remember going to Daytona one year

to race amateurs

and our roof was leaking so bad

that my dad put buckets under the roof.

Ninety-nine percent of the people fix their roof,

but our parents, they were just different.

I mean, they put every cent they had into

taking us racing and giving us this opportunity.

I was thinking a lot about people who'd been behind me

to help me and all the sacrifices.

I've enjoyed the ride,

but it's been hard at times,

and I'm lucky to have a great family

to get behind me, support me.

I owe a lot to them.

I tried to put a little bit of pressure on him,

but anyway, difficult to overtake.

I was kinda going, "Oh, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen?

"I'm braking, braking, is he coming?"

"All right, I got it. You know, now I'm safe."

When Hayden gets back to the pit,

he's supposed to go to the winner's enclosure.

Instead, he takes his dad for a lap of honor.

It was cool, it was special.

That's what we do, dirt tracking.

When I won my first dirt track national,

I took my dad for a lap.

I didn't have it planned out.

It just kinda hit me after the race

to do a lap with my dad.

Without Pops spending all his hard-earned money

to take me racing and helping me out,

you know, I'd probably be

in school right now,

working some job I hate.

-- Amigo,good one, amigo. -- Thanks, man, thanks.

What's up, man?

You come back quick, huh?

I looked and it said plus two seconds.

Whoo!

You know, it's obvious that I wanted to win my home Grand Prix.

I was happy for Nicky at the same time.

You know, he's worked hard. I've know Nicky since he was eight years old.

To be there and be part of

two Americans, one and two, at the Grand Prix

was a memorable experience, for sure.

Nicky Hayden!

...throughout the weekend, so, uh...

But it's good to see two Americans, one and two, at the home GP.

Just wish it was me.

I was actually very disappointed at the end of the race

because where I finished, it was...

it was very disappointing.

But then I looked back at it

and went through it all in my mind,

and basically just said,

"I did everything I could.

"I honestly did everything I could at Laguna."

That was probably the best feeling,

it's just winning again.

You know, it'd been hard, when you're used to winning every week

and winning a lot and then

when you get beat, you know, it's tough.

You keep bouncing back mentally,

and putting everything into it

and staying focused, staying hungry.

You just forget how good it felt to win.

That's probably why I was so happy.

It was definitely the happiest day of my life,

just to stand on that podium again,

just to win.

And that day was my day.