Finally Suzuka!

Suzuka, Suzuka, Suzuka - how have you evaded me for so long?

I really wanted to try Suzuka last year but never got around to it. It's quite far down the road at 390km door-to-door and its not a cheap circuit to run. Finally on Feb 25th I took 2 days off work especially and headed down for 2 x 1 hour sessions.

The weather was perfect and myself and a good friend drove down, enjoyed eel on the way and stayed over at the track hotel. We talked about the next day over dinner and what would await us. It was doki-doki on drugs by the time the sun rose again and drove onto the track for the first time.

The first thing that struck me was the narrowness of the track and the closeness of the barriers. Every corner was new to me and even driving slowly in the first laps after a pace car, the car was easily upset under the unusual braking, side-to-side loading and off camber curves that it threw at you every step of the way.

The first time I took the 130R without the pace car, I took it at 120kmph and grinned at how much space I still had left on the circuit. Towards the end of session 2, I'd got that up to around 160kmph but it still scared the crap out of me and made me giddy driving towards it approaching 180kmph knowing it was coming.

My favourite part of the circuit was the S curves and the gyaku curve. I guess that was because the speed was more manageable through there in terms of what I was used to. The first corner and spoon were really difficult for me and I didn't really get them yet. The corner entry is so difficult, I over slowed every time.

Anyway, here is some footage from the last 3 laps. I managed a fastest lap of a 2'45.6 but there is definitely a lot more time in there once I slept on it.