Scott Jones

The story of Rossi’s glowing brake discs

For a year I had a unique photograph. As far as I could tell, after searching everywhere I could think of, I was the only one who’d gone to the entrance of Turn 1 at Losail in 2009 and captured the glowing brakes as the MotoGP riders as the mashed their front tires to slow for the first right-hander. It was only the second year that the Grand Prix of Qatar was being held at night under the lights, but I when I noticed the brakes glowing, I figured that it was only a matter of time before the regulars showed up at the same spot to get the images I was capturing, and probably to do a better job of it at that.

But I never saw another photographer there for the rest of the weekend, and I wondered if I had been lucky to have had a recent experience that made me go looking for this image. A few months earlier I’d been at Laguna Seca to shoot the finale of the American Le Mans series. This event starts in the afternoon and finishes up six hours later in the early evening. Cars, with so much more weight to slow down, light up their brakes all over the track, and there it was pretty easy to catch this in camera.

There were so many opportunities, in fact, that I got a few images I didn’t expect, such as the one below. The brake rotors have holes drilled in them to allow more efficient venting of the air the cools the brakes. In this instances, those holes made a surprising pattern when I happened to pan with the moving car at just the right speed. This was the only image like this that I got that night.

So maybe it was because these images were in my mind from having shot racing at night the past October that I went snooping around Turn 1 at Losail. It wasn’t only Rossi who was lighting up his front brake rotors in this spot. Five or six other riders had them glowing nicely toward the end of the qualifying session, but Rossi’s were the brightest. Of the others, James Toseland had the brightest rings glowing that night, and I was pleased to have JT sign a print of this image at Donington last year. To this day it’s my only rider-signed photograph.

The Rossi photo’s main success was at the Day of Stars auction at Laguna Seca some months later. I’d donated a framed print of the photograph to Riders For Health, and this became the first of many prints I donated in 2009. A Rossi collector from the UK bought the print for $1600 with Randy Mamola’s promise that Rossi would sign it. I wondered what had ever become of the print until last month when the collector emailed me for the date and location of the image. He was getting a plaque made for the print’s new frame and was about to hang it in his home. I hope someday soon to have a picture of my picture in the collector’s house. As pleased as I was to help raise $1,600 for Riders for Health, I was also very pleased at the thought of Valentino Rossi signing one of my photographs.

Though I believe I got the only such images in 2009, this year was a different story. My Rossi photo had been gotten enough exposure that several photographers asked me where I’d taken the image last year. And a few weeks ago, I was not the only photographer at turn 1. Some glowing disk shots have already appeared on Facebook, and I expect you’ll see some in magazines before long, as well.

I thought my best chance to sell the photo was to Brembo, the maker of the glowing brakes. But emails and calls to Brembo America and to the headquarters in Italy never received a single reply. If Brembo reconsiders, this year they’ll have many more shots to choose from. Perhaps my distinction among MotoGP photographers will turn out to be that I was the first one to take that shot. But I may be wrong about that: just because I couldn’t find a similar shot from 2009 doesn’t mean that it isn’t out there somewhere. Maybe Brembo bought that one instead of mine!