The Perfect Italian Road – Pray For Speed Switzerland [ep.01]

The first ride of the trip and the only descent not in Switzerland. The Italian side of the Great Saint Bernard Pass was an amazing way to start off. One of the best roads I’ve ridden to date.
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all right welcome back to the channel as promised in the intro episode of this series we are at the top of the great Saint Bernard pass on the border of Italy and Switzerland it’s also a couple minutes away from France right in the middle of things here in Europe and uh if I had to go down the Italian side I’m going to pause it here for a second and go over the stats quickly so about 14 minutes of descending average gradient seven percent negative seven which is kind of my favorite I really like that you know once you get into the double digits you’ve got actually a managed speed a lot more even on the straight section just because you can’t slow down fast enough coming into tight Corners seven percent so real sweet spot for me uh distance 13 case average speed 58k an hour 36 miles an hour not very fast uh pretty technical up top so that’s why the speed is a little bit lower than what you would think for like a seven percent max speed 85 53 miles an hour I like to hit 80 on every road ride I do I mean that’s fast for sure I hit that multiple times a week so I’m very used to on that kind of speed all right let’s jump back anyway so for us ride in three days the lineup for this one we were up there for a little while setting up and uh got the camera on Taylor’s head and a couple of cars were coming down and we just kind of had to wait it out for a gap we’re ready to go and yeah that’s one of the little doggies or actually big doggies now this guy comes blown by first first Corner blind corner and normally I’m thinking all right we’ll catch up the motorbikes somewhere where it gets technical but we never saw that dude again he’s a badass guy obviously near the road and uh it’s definitely faster on a Moto if you know what you’re doing on these uh a little bit flatter slopes and the double digit stuff so I hadn’t actually seen this tunnel at all straight into some kind of sci-fi movie here we were standing right above it shooting b-roll early on but yeah everything down here is a new and a surprise to us because we drove up from the Swiss side and this is our first time seeing any of this I’ve also switched onto the map screen on my head unit which I normally do for the sense I haven’t ridden before so I can kind of see if there’s like a tight Corner coming up or you know just a little bit extra knowledge but their screen is completely black right now there’s nothing going on I forgot to upload the European maps for this trip so for this first descent I’m just going totally on on site which is fine it’s nice to have a little bit of that uh maps to look at but it’s not a big deal you know we did it for how many years without that kind of Technology I also decided I was gonna ride on the front for this one because I didn’t want to put that pressure on Taylor and have him you know I think he has to go at some crazy speed down here I just thought to myself I’m gonna ride this you know fast as always but definitely not going to be pushing any limits and and risking anything because it’s the first run of the series and there’s quite a lot of pressure anyway just you come all the way here and you crash out here hurt yourself and break your bike and you go home with nothing except bruises or broken bones that’s a that’s a big issue um so yeah I’m uh I’m riding nice and smooth here as far as I’m concerned and it’s absolutely beautiful it’s about 9am I think in the morning Monday morning you know come up nice and early and don’t come up too early and be freezing but you don’t want uh tons of cars on the road so yeah most of the corners are kind of predictable but every now and then I want to tighten up that you weren’t really expecting to and that’s this hand-built wooden rail on the side which is absolutely gorgeous also adds to that kind of speed effect when you’re flying down past stuff really close by on the peripheral and then on the other side stone walls and we were told that the Swiss roads are going to be perfect and the Italian roads are a mess but this Road’s absolutely perfect incredible Road and this is by technical up here you know like I said it wasn’t a super fast average speed but that’s wise because so many bands up here and I’m also right now I know I’m thinking oh we’re in the we’re in the shade how’s the exposure you know I locked the exposure things like that always come up in my mind but I’ve got to try to push that out of the way and just enjoy the experience of actually being here and riding and you can we’re not going to stop and change settings anyway once we start writing so uh you’re just gonna push that aside and kind of enjoy it and also you’re gonna focus on the task at hand yeah you guys might hear when I stand up on the pedals the bike sounding a little bit like a chainsaw I don’t know much I can do about that I wasn’t making that noise before I left but I slapped a new chain on [Music] [Applause] it yeah so that’s just what I was talking about earlier just riding on site here I love man look at this slower rock wall popping up on the right hand side massive looks skyscraper High next to you and then again on the other side is broken up wall flashing by such a cool piece of road I’m really happy we stopped in here and uh I changed plans just before we left we’ll get the first Super Talk of the day and starting to straighten out a little as we head down further and further into the into the valley and I’m looking down constantly seeing what’s coming up playing you know how to approach each Corner as it comes this one can’t see through so I pop up and Bam damn it motorbike took the Apex of that on the road right there but that’s not my personal roads but you do see that coming and it always hits you like ah there goes the line you have to readjust quickly big slow one here and you can really start to see down into the valley see what’s coming up there’s a chainsaw noise coming I slapped a new chain on and uh started making weird noise but when you’re traveling you don’t really want to start messing with your bike it’s not rubbing the frames it wasn’t rubbing the front Max so those are shifting well so I just left it unfortunately we’re gonna have to hear that for the whole trip that was probably the only pothole on the whole Road there just a little Dodge around it and kind of full gas down here I’m coming up into some more technical stuff but you can tell the road’s starting to stretch out open up a little bit and a lot of these ones you can actually see down before you enter them so take a nice Apex and you can run it all the way out wide yeah you can see right there up to the right you can look down and you know nothing’s coming up a lot of people think we’re just taking uh crazy chances but you know I’ve been doing this for been riding full time for 20 years and uh never hit a car head on if I’m just blowing a blind corner it’s just not something we do so yeah on these videos hard to see too until like right now there’s a bunch of cow crap or something there alright we can see that from a lot further away in person right here is where we park the car on the way back up and we shot some of the b-roll that you saw in the intro to this and in the main film and in the intro series another car on the Apex there there’s a big wall uh looking at you if you mess that corner up it’s not a pretty place to to run wide now I’m starting to see this tunnel down to the left there it’s actually a bridge but it’s also a tunnel because it’s the new road that cuts through the the whole mountain and we are kind of on the old road the tourist Road you could say now which is really good because a lot of cars they just go commuting or traveling here all the time they’re all going to take that tunnel and not waste their time going through this twisty Road which means there’s less traffic for us [Applause] and I had that Tunnel right there something you see on the maps and when I was scouting it it was kind of a middle point of The Descent and I knew that we had to go underneath it and I have one part of the road I kind of Street viewed a lot and I was really looking forward to this corner coming up there so I’m starting to see all of this now is what I remember from street view on Google Maps so it’s familiar and it’s kind of cool that you’re recognizing a place that you’ve never been to this is so nice look at that road I mean holy moly so here’s the corner I was talking about I’m looking forward to it and all of that anticipation for weeks coming up to the corner that’s gotta win shrieking like a kid there it all meant nothing because there’s a bus ride in the in the middle of that corner and you got to take a wide Slow line now this is the only part of all of the descents I released before the main film came out I wanted to put something out and this is such a cool piece of road here I’ve got the new foil I got the new kit I got Taylor right on my wheel and we’re just hammering through here such a cool feeling amazing piece of road this is where we hit our max speed now the speed’s a little weird because my computer’s saying like 81 at most Taylor said 87. same computer and we’re riding right next to each other or right behind each other so I don’t know how that varied but I just put the max speed in the in the stats up at the side of the video at 85 here now somewhere in the middle that’s what it felt like and yeah I was just waiting I’m like when do I actually get out of the super talk kind of going on and on and then real tight hairpin popped up there um so yeah I’d say this is the the lower slopes we’re into now we’re in the forest into the trees means we’ve dropped a lot of elevation and it seems to be kind of narrowing up a little bit or maybe that’s just the feeling you get because there’s more shadows and there’s Big Trees on on both sides and cars are starting to also build up you know I’m seeing more and more the car is coming up so I’m a little wary here trying to take a nice line through this but I can see through the trees are coming and it’s like the first who has actually flattened out just a little bit and I started to see cars ahead of me too a little disappointed but I’m also thinking like I don’t know we haven’t seen many cars in front of us the whole time we’ve done well so far this is our still going downhill but yeah I haven’t actually Pole and I’m [Applause] yeah I can’t complaining definitely can’t see this other car coming up but it’s plenty of time to get through run a little while because I don’t want to start pedaling and yeah I know what you’re doing taking taking a hand off the wheel and honking if you think it’s really an emergency but waited there until the last second and finally could see a gap and shot around that van and once they pass a section of cars like that I’m just going maxing out the Watts and speeds because I don’t want to have to be dealing with cars again and you know if I pass a car I don’t want them to have to pass me back so so yeah look at this road I know I keep saying it but we don’t really know what we’re in for this is our first descent and it’s just such a perfect bit of Road I’m going for 11 minutes just flawless and from here on out it’s kind of like this long straights uh hairpin on a straight repeat and another hairpin so I’ll probably wrap it up here you guys can watch the rest of this another couple of minutes uh definitely worth the watch but I thought you know oh damn spot there too yeah so there’s always something that pops up that you weren’t expecting so obviously this part hasn’t seen Sun all day but yeah definitely check the uh check the part without me mumbling down for the rest of this descent let me come back and join the highway and pretty relieved to get the first one in the books and I should be kind of excited right down here but I’m I’m just a perfectionist I’m thinking okay how did that work out how was the light on this descent what are we doing next is hopefully Nina’s going to take this right-hand turn and meet us and my brain’s just working in in uh work mode it’s not really in party mode that’s just who I am you know not full of emotion because you got to be pretty level-headed when you’re doing this kind of stuff all right guys next time I’ll be back going down the opposite side of this pass on the Swiss side of the great Saint Bernard I’ll see you there peace