Suzuka International Circuit - what an experience !

April 30th 2010 was the day of J's Racing Suzuka Attack 2010 Round 2 event held at no other than the world famous Suzuka International Circuit in Mie prefecture !

The circuit itself is about 420kms (!) east of Tokyo hidden away behind the main town of Suzuka. The town itself immediately gave me an impression that Honda was the main man in the area with Honda factories, Honda testing centres, Honda education centres, Honda dealerships etc. sprouting out all over the place. The circuit itself had nothing but Honda Civic Type Rs (FD2s) as their main vehicles with Honda advertising overwhelmingly prevailent.

When I arrived at the circuit hotel the day before I was greeted by familiar sounds of racing. It got me very excited and anxious to start my day the next morning.

So, let's start by taking a look at this amazing F1 class international circuit first !
(The map below shows the circuit and I'll use it to give you my impressions of the circuit and each of its corners.Click on it to view it in full)



The Main Straight

As you will see in my video as soon as you enter the main straight it looks amazing ! Grand stand on the left with a huge ferris wheel in the background, first class pit areas on the right and just a very clean main straight overall. When I entered it for the first time it felt like I was watching an F1 race from an in-car camera of one of the F1 drivers ! The straight isn't as fast as the Fuji straight though and I think I didn't exceed more than 180km/h on it.

1st and 2nd curve

Loved them ! Not only is entry to the 1st curve fast but it is very forgiving should you miss your braking point or the apex. It widens on exit and gives you a chance to comfortably brake and downshift in preparation for the 2nd curve ! Once you're in 3rd (I believe) you can gently exit out heading for the S'es.

The S'es

These took me a while to figure out but in the 2nd of the 2 1hr sessions I got the hang of them quite comfortably by timely downshifting, gently braking and letting the car "flow" through them without any obrupt weight shifts. I found that during exiting of the 2nd of the S'es I had to shift down in order to keep my revs above 6000rpm.

Gyaku bank curve

This corner still eludes me. If you enter too fast you go too wide and end up in the mosh pit (as many other cars learnt the hard way). You enter too slow you're in a good shape but you're loosing valuable time. I wasn't doing it right and having thought about it in the last 24 hrs I think I can do this right next time (if there is one !).

Dunlop curve

An absolutely fantastic corner ! You enter it relatively slowly aiming towards the apex and as you accelerate fully the G forces are pulling you away from the inside of that corner but it doesn't matter because as you gain speed you're gradually entering the straight part of the corner going full speed. The cool thing about this corner is that you can't see what's lurking behind it because of a wall barrier which gradually unravels what's ahead as you make your way through the corner.

Degner curve

The nice right hand kink is fantastic ! It is fast and kind of daring and since there is a lot of run off it isn't as scary to approach as if there was a wall nearby ! The 90 degree corner is a downhill corner and also very fast and it exits right into the overpass. I had to play around with gears here because I felt like on exit I was under 6000rpm and had I exited in 2nd instead of 3rd I would have had more pull behind me to shave more seconds from the lap time

Hairpin curve

Your usual hairpin. Nothing exciting here except as you exit Degner curve and press ahead there is a slight right hand kink just before the hairpin which is a full throttle approach kind of corner ! Loved it !

200R

Another one of those high speed corners where you can just let it all fly ! It reminded me of the Dunlop curve in the opposite direction. It goes downhill as opposed to Dunlop being an uphill curve. It is very fast and picturesque and unfortunately I was struggling with the latter part of that corner where I kept braking being afraid of running off. Watching others I saw them just pushing and never saw any brake lights come on on their cars so I presumed either my fear or just an incorrect line was forcing me to brake unnecessarily there.

Spoon curve

First of the corners here is a very fast (!) 4th gear corner and the 2nd one a slightly slower 3rd gear corner. Again these reminded me of the 1st and 2nd curves in the nature of their speeds and handling needed to overcome them. When you exit Spoon curves you're flying downhill towards the back stretch

Back stretch

Probably the fastest straight on the circuit where I reached almost 200km/h. It is downhill and uphill and it is bumpy ! With my initial damper settings it was a little unsettling so i had to harden up the settings on my front and rear dampers. What follows is the infamous 130R.

130R

*Sigh*. We were warned about this curve. On the day I saw 2 serious accidents from our group. A Honda Fit with a written off rear, an S2000 hitting the wall and smashing its side. It is a very fast corner, it widens on exit but if you don't time your speed you'll collect the dirt and unsettle your car enough to hit the wall. I've heard many stories about this corner. If you want to know more read about it on google.

CASIO triangle

Very nice shikane. Very embarassing for me when on my first lap I missed it and ended up wide. I blamed it on my lack of knowledge and familiarity with the circuit :) From then on as you exit this triangle you hit the main straight !

So there you go !
5.8kms of an amazing, scary, exciting, thrilling, surprising and fun circuit !

It is now my favourite circuit although being so far away from Tokyo probably never to be driven again ! It is a much tighter circuit and less forgiving if you loose it. Compared to Fuji with wide run offs it gives you less room for error but it makes you work harder !

As to the event itself. We had 2 sessions of 1 hr each. Saw lots of nice Hondas ranging from Fit to S2000s and NSXs. There was a race queen there and a GT driver Wada-san (Taniguchi couldn't make it). Wada-san drove 10 lucky dudes around the circuit showing them what their machines were capable of. I wasn't one of the lucky ones unfortunately although I had the pleasure of watching him in my rear view mirror sitting on my ass in an FD2 around the Spoon Curve. That guy was FAST !

FACTS

• My lap time was 2'41"37 (given another chance I'm sure I can slash it down to 2'35"s)
• Out of 48 cars, my overall position in Round 2 was 27th
• I was 2nd fastest DC5 out of 4 (the 1st fastest was J's Racing's race-tuned DC5!)
• I've beaten majority of FD2s and was beaten by majority of AP1/AP2s
• Main tyre of choice was Dunlop Direzza 03G (only a few ADVAN A050s)!
• If you smashed and damaged certain parts of the circuit your out-of-pocket expense to cover the damage would be up to 790,000 yen (around 8,000 AU dollars)

Anyway enjoy the photos.
I'll try to make a video in the next few days !