Zooming in at World Superbike Championship

SINGAPORE - The World Superbike Championship (WSBK) racers were burning rubber.

The rest of us were just burning.

From grid girls clutching umbrellas, the audience sweltering in the grandstands, media and team crews by trackside, to the racers themselves - melting in their helmets and leathers - the 36-degree C heat showed no mercy.

Dark clouds gave us hope after the first race.

But it might as well have been a hallucination.

The thunderstorm was a no-show and a bike even caught fire early in the second and last race, prompting a restart.

Photographing the racers was a race in itself.

The media scrum was intense. One photographer rode a bike with one hand while operating a camera with the other.

Competing with a press gang like that for shots of a racer going past at more than 300kmh was a sure-fire recipe for burnout.

Of course, the racer would come back in the next lap pretty fast. And you could hear them a mile away.

TEAM

Off the track, what kept these souped-up bikes' engines purring were the team crews in the pit.

During most of each lap, these sweating sentinels (from the tension as much as the weather) watched their racers intently.

They sprung into action during pit-stops, swarms of eight or so mechanics refuelling and changing parts like a machine as well-oiled as their bikes.

Like an orchestra, the crews and racers played their parts in an ode to skill, guts and competition. And the symphony's final movement was victory.

Marco Melandri of the Aprilia Racing Team won both races.

He was often neck-and-neck with team-mate Sylvain Guintoli, second-place finisher in both races.

Melandri said: "I feel extremely happy. It's very tough to race in the heat, very bad for tyres. It was an amazing battle though, especially in the last lap."

Also very bad for people and amazing, too, that it meant I would soon get to stop sun-baking myself.

Still, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The excitement of a race can feel like forever, but be over in the blink of an eye.

I managed to capture what little of the action I could fit in the close of a shutter. Looking at these photos, I can relive those moments. The same goes for every time someone mentions my new tan.

This article was first published on June 17, 2014.
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