If you watch much MotoGP you probably know how the mechanics move the bikes from the box to the pit lane and warm them up.

Once I asked a mechanic why this is done so frequently and was told that because different parts of the engine are regularly taken apart and reassembled, the mechanics need to check for leaks, make sure all sensors are registering correctly, and so on.

While they run through this process, a mechanic stands beside the bike and revs it up over and over. At Losail in 2013, I happened to be standing behind (then) rookie Marc Marquez’ Honda and saw the tach lights spike briefly each time the mechanic twisted the throttle.

The lights appeared for only a moment. So I set my Nikon D4 to its fastest FPS (frames per second) and along with the rhythm of the mechanic’s revving, shot bursts at 10fps when I expected the lights to appear.

This one wasn’t too difficult to catch. It was much easier, in fact those exhaust fire shots! But still, I did get quite a few exposures like this:

Quite a different image, no? One might say ‘dull’ even, at least by comparison to the lights and their reflections on the windscreen. In this case, timing was everything.

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