{"id":54546,"date":"2018-06-15T15:38:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T14:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/a-postcard-from-valencia\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T14:43:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T13:43:32","slug":"postcard-valencia","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/january-2018\/78\/postcard-valencia\/","title":{"rendered":"A postcard from Valencia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Spanish never truly embraced F1 until Fernando Alonso broke cover. Their love affair with motorcycle racing runs rather deeper&#8230;&nbsp;<\/strong>photographer V\u00e1clav Du\u0161ka<\/p>\n<p>America once hosted three F1 Grands Prix in a single season (1982), an idea nowadays perhaps unthinkable, yet such is Spain\u2019s infatuation with bikes that it presently hosts four (of 18) MotoGP races annually \u2013 in Jerez, Barcelona, Aragon and Valencia. Its stranglehold on the schedule has been thus since 2010.<\/p>\n<p>These images were taken at the 2017 finale, where Marc M\u00e1rquez\u2019s consecration added a certain frisson, but the mood is ever similar. As Mat Oxley explains on the preceding pages, Spain\u2019s love affair with bike racing gained impetus in the late 1960s \u2013 and nobody has yet seen fit to tap the brakes. In contrast, Alfonso de Portago recorded the first F1 GP podium finish for a Spaniard \u2013 sharing with Peter Collins at Silverstone in 1956 \u2013 and such a feat would not be repeated until Fernando Alonso took third in a Renault R23 in the 2003 Malaysian GP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,186],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121673],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223275,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/54546\/revisions\/223275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54546"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=54546"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=54546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}