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Ladies and gentlemen, the Honda seamless gearbox!

Just kidding. I’m not sure what this is, in fact. Back in 2009 I was pretty green as a MotoGP photographer. When I got into pit lane I tended to take a bunch of pictures of whatever looked interesting and figure that was good enough.

I have many images like this, photos with no reference shot to remind me of the context, in this case what bike these parts belonged to. As I recall, this was a 125cc grand prix bike that was awaiting the reassembly of its transmission. Of course there are many other pieces shown here that do not belong in the gear box. But what is missing and from which bike, I have no idea.

In the same situation now, I would zoom out to grab a reference shot so I would know such useful details. Well, most of the time I would. I still forget sometimes.

The thing I remember clearly, as I photographed this wire bucket of parts, was thinking how amazing it was that a person could take this pile of nonsense and put it back together not only correctly, but quickly, having done the same procedure many times before.

The mechanic who had recently washed the lube and grime off of those parts earlier in the day would soon take one piece at a time and put each in place to complete a racing motorcycle. No parts left over. No scratching of the head, wondering what Ikea meant by the mysterious arrow pointing between two parts that couldn’t possibly be connected. No midnight oil burning, suggesting things might be clearer in the morning.

So it’s yet another shot reminding us that a lot of stuff happens behind the scenes, never getting on TV, but remarkable nonetheless.

Photograph: ©2009 by Scott Jones / PHOTO.GP – All Rights Reserved

Camera Info: Nikon D4 with Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8

[mgallery keyword=”Pit Lane”]