Fast fear factor

What a premier motorbike race looks like in super-slow-mo

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

No longer will you have to wonder what it takes to pilot a motorcycle into high-speed corners with nothing but your knee and a little momentum to keep you upright.

Red Bull rider and current MotoGP leader Casey Stoner explains what it’s like cornering his Repsol Honda RC212V race bike around the track. This particular footage was shot in Jerez with a high-speed camera from Vision Research during the Spanish Grand Prix this past April. The Phantom camera is capable of shooting full high-definition video and slowing it down to 1,000 frames per second. The lean angles alone are astonishing at regular speed, but to see them in slow motion is something else. Amazing, really.

The 2007 MotoGP world champion sits atop the standings with 152 total points with half the season already in the bag. Spanish rider and current world champion Jorge Lorenzo, aboard the Yamaha YZR-M1, is in second.

The premier motorcycle racing series makes its way onto U.S. soil later this month at the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix at the world-famous Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in California, and again in August at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.