Parc Fermé: A Packed Weekend at VIR and What Are We Doing From Here?

VIR was a weekend of good intentions, for both the riders of MotoAmerica and myself. We are now a few days post VIR and yet nothing new has been posted on the website. Why?

I will get to that, but first I wanted to write a few words about the track itself.

 I had this round circled on my calendar from early in the season not just because of all the history that has been written about this track, but also some of it that hasn’t been.

“We get to see some really cool things go around this track, but we will never talk about them.” said a corner marshal that was employed directly by VIR itself.

“We have even seen in the past where a corner marshall posted a selfie on their social media during a private test event and they were fired immediately. We take this very seriously” another added.

As someone who spent many years serving in faceless, windowless buildings tucked back away in anonymous Air Force bases, you have my interest.

Arriving at the track is even different than any other facility I visited this year. I stayed at a hotel in Virginia, and the track is in Virginia, but the best way to get there is to go to North Carolina. The small town of Milton, NC rests just over the border and is where I had probably the best pizza ever in my life on Saturday night from Aunt Millie’s.

So as you cross back and forth across the state line to get to the track you follow a narrow twisty two lane ribbon of asphalt that slowly winds to the entrance. Even after pulling onto the grounds you continue on for just long enough to think you might be lost before you come upon a small manned entry gate that is always staffed by someone pleasant; even when bored wanna-be writers pull up at 6:00 am because they can’t sleep.

But there’s still more driving because you have a way to go to reach the paddock. You begin to understand why automakers feel secure in being able to use this facility for testing things they don’t necessarily want in the public eye. This is a complete contrast from places like Road Atlanta where the run under the Fox Factory Bridge down to the final turn is on full display for all to see, even from outside the property.

Tyler Scott leads a train of riders into the “Snake” section of the course.

After maybe another mile you exit the woods and navigate a gentle bend to the left. All of a sudden you are on a bridge over the “Snake” section of the racecourse. Keep following the pathway as it bends back to the right and up to the top of a hill and I feel compelled to get out of my truck and run around in the lush green grass singing in the sunshine like Julie Andrews.

That is, until I finally absorb the view of the green landscape around me at the top of that hill and realize how much of the track I can see from here. Come Saturday it’s almost impossible to drive around this section of grass because this is where everyone wants to set up camp. I’m kinda jealous of them.

There was a lot going on this weekend both off and on the track that gave spectators a reason to come out and visit the track over the weekend. The Motul ADV Experience was back for its second consecutive year and the adventure bikes turned up in droves. 

One thing I noticed I feel like VIR and MotoAmerica need to be commended on is the kids zone this past weekend. Not that they had one, that is a pretty normal thing that I think is at every MotoAmerica round. No, in this case what stuck out to me was how it was smartly placed in the trees that faced NASCAR Bend from inside the track. The weather was brutal all weekend with both high temps and high humidity that put the heat index around the triple digits, but back in the trees that surrounded the kids zone it felt a good 15-20 degrees cooler. 

Have you ever brought a kid to a sporting event and had them get hot and bored? That is when they decide your day at the track is done and doing anything that is not leaving immediately is a crime against their human rights. Keep the kids happy and not only do their parents get to stay, but the kids will keep coming back and become fans, too.

Despite brutal heat the stands were packed with race fans at VIR.

The fans turned showed up in big numbers at VIR and it’s the little detail like this that will keep that happening each and every year.

So What Happened This Weekend?

Well, frankly, too much happened at once. As this is probably going to be the last MotoAmerica round I am able to make it to in person for 2026 I went hard to plan to maximize my time to gather everything I was hoping to use for both future audio episodes of the podcast as well as written features on the website. 

You know what I didn’t plan at all? Any sort of time or process of how I was going to actually share any of this with the world while I was at the track. I’m confident that I will have that worked out by my next live race weekend at Daytona next year.

There are already a couple websites that do a fine job of giving you plain race results. You will be able to get them here, too, for the last couple rounds of the 2026 MotoAmerica schedule that will take place in September. 

On top of that, however, beginning next week at least two written pieces about something having to do with MotoAmerica will be available every week here on AmericanSuperbikeShow.com. Right now “written pieces” is the best description I can give as it will include catching up with riders from different classes, insight behind the scenes of life in the paddock, and I will even put an occasional opinion piece on the status and direction of everything that we are doing here.

It’s going to be a frantic sprint to the finish on the track on top of the plethera of good stories already out there in each and every class in the paddock; it’s time to get some of them published.

Lights out. Let’s go!