Super Suzuka

Suzuka is situated in a small city (by Japanese standards) south west of Nagoya. Nagoya is where most fans stay as it is a city of nearly 10 million and good rail transport to the venue. However, getting from the train station to the track takes a while by bus, as there are a lot of fans and the buses are limited. The roads around Suzuka are small and narrow so making bus only lanes is difficult. Having said that the time to get there was about forty minutes from the train station, and about an hour and a half on the return journey. Lots of people complained but this is not unusual for a lot of races.

Japan is an amazing country where English is spoken but Google Translate is your best friend and most of the train/metro signage is in English as well as Japanese. We have had our fair share of “angels” spotting bewildered tourists and helping out. The Japanese people are incredibly polite and appreciate any effort you make to use even just a word or two in Japanese. If you ask politely, everyone will try and help. We had an amazing train driver who went to extraordinary lengths to make sure we got off at the correct place and onto the next train. Having said that, even after being in Tokyo and Nagoya, nothing prepared us for Osaka train station! We took about half an hour just to get out! Most train stations are built with lots of huge shops/malls on top and around them and the stations themselves are huge, multi-storey affairs. The elevators sometimes only go to the shops or offices and not the different station levels or streets! We got horribly lost but have been back a few times and are slowly getting the hang of it!

Back to Nagoya. Suzuka racetrack s steeped in history. The track has seen many champions crowned, especially when the venue used to be the penultimate in the race calendar. The track is the only figure of eight track and the track goes underneath itself (just like in all the scalextrics tracks you have hidden away!!). The venue was great, with a theme park attached in which the rides were free and all the grandstands offering great views. However, the monitor screens were too small and in our stand and too far away – we had to use binoculars to view them, as they were situated to the left and right of where we sat. However the track view was fantastic.

Now to the racing…

After an abysmal display (by Red Bull standards) in Singapore Max Verstappen gave a master class in driving around Suzuka. He led in every session and won the race with consummate ease. Normal service has been resumed. What about the rest? The McLarens were the surprise package who came in second and third. Ferrari had some good moments in the early qualifiers but could not keep up with McLaren in Q3 and were 4th and sixth on the grid. During the race the decision to use medium tyres rather than hard may have cost them better placings. They finished 4th and 6th. Mercedes finished 5th and 7th and did well holding off Leclerc for as long as they did. Alonso made it to P8 and Checo, who looked solid in the qualifiers had a terrible race. He had a slow start and with the cars bunched at the first corner there was mayhem. Checo then made a really clumsy move and hit Magnusson which ultimately caused Checo to retire from the race. Then after “retiring” Red Bull realised they would carry over a 5 second penalty (which would mean a three place grid drop) to the next race for Checo. Given his current form that was not a good thing! Red
Bull then sent Checo out again just to serve the penalty, despite being 28 laps behind. And then promptly retired him again. A total farce and RB have exposed another area that needs the rules tightened. Alpine came in 9th and 10th which was a surprise but hopefully signals better things for them, 5 cars were DNF!

There were lots of battles during the race and most seemed to be between team-mates. The McLaren duo swapped positions a couple of times, the Mercedes pair were battling it out with Hamilton forcing Russell off the track, Lawson, who had fantastic qualifying sessions, just finished outside the points but managed to keep Yuki at bay despite Yuki having fresher tyres. A great race from Lawson and a pity he will not be getting a seat….yet.

Overall a great weekend at a fantastic track with no rain! The fans were awesome and loads of them dressed up for the occasion. The crowd were politely enthusiastic! Japan is fantastic.

Now to more racing….