SMB: Visiting Suzuka Circuit

Hello everybody, and welcome back to another edition of Steve’s Motorsports Blog!

As I mentioned a while back, my wife and I went to Japan and as part of the trip, journeyed to Suzuka Circuit to watch the F1 race. I wanted to tell everybody how it went and my thoughts and feelings about going to those hallowed grounds.

I was insanely excited to go to the track, it’s always been one of my favourites to drive on various simracing titles over the years. An old school circuit that is incredibly fun to drive. Walking up to the gates I got emotional; something like this has been a bucket-list item for me for a long time.

It’s just a shame the day on the whole feels much different.

I wanted to wait before writing this because it was an experience my wife and I will never forget, but not exactly for the reasons you’d expect. I want to preface this by saying my time at the track would have been vastly different if a few things had been done differently. Some due to my own planning but I think more if we weren’t going to see an F1 race.

The jist is that….it was INSANELY crowded/lengthy getting to/from the track from Osaka, where we were staying for that leg of our trip. What Google Maps had told us, was we needed to take a single regional, limited express train (not the bullet train) that would have lasted 2.5hrs from Osaka to the track. However, we found out at the station in Osaka that those train tickets had been sold out until it was too late to get to the track. After consulting some Aussies who went the day before, we had to take 3 different extremely tight-packed subways, where we had to stand the whole 3 hours, plus a 90min wait for a shuttle bus to get to the track.

We had admission passes for the back half of the track, so we had to wait another 45mins for an internal shuttle bus to put us by the straight on the run to 130R. We got to our section with 15mins to spare before the start of the F1 race. We left Osaka at 7am thinking we’d get there for 10am so we could watch the support races and walk around the track a bit. Nope, not a chance.

With it being an F1 race, it was very crowded at the track as well. My advantage of being much taller than most of the visitors to the track allowed me to get some pictures of the track without people blocking the way, however we weren’t able to walk around much so I could get a clear view of the track a lot of times.

Had we gone to a SuperGT or SRO race, I doubt it would have been as busy, and we would have been able to enjoy it more. I will have to go back, because we were only there for just the duration of the F1 race.

Our journey back to Osaka was arduous as well. We decided to not take the subways back but to take a regional train (first come first serve) to Nagoya and then take a bullet train back to Osaka. We got to the Suzuka station by walking 3km over the shuttle bus, because that was quicker! We then had to wait almost 2 hours to get onto a train (so many people filling up the train cars). By the time we got back to our hotel in Osaka, it was 9 or 10pm.

We were gone 14-15hrs and at the track for 2.5 of them.

In hindsight, we should have rented a car. This is one of those things I don’t think we could have planned for without having done it already. It’s a shame, because the track it’s self was so beautiful with the cherry blossoms and the fan atmosphere was epic, it would have been a much better experience if we got to the track sooner and was able to relax at all.

Sadly the photos I was able to take are quite limited, which is why I’m not posting an SPS for this event. You can enjoy them here at the bottom of this post.

For those wanting to ever go to Suzuka…don’t go to an F1 race unless you plan ahead. Rent a car, even if you have to walk a bit to get to the track, you will be better off than waiting for the transit.

I want to go back and do it properly. I want to go for a SuperGT race or the Suzuka 1000kms. Even though I can now say I’ve been to Suzuka, I don’t truly feel like I have. I want to experience the full nature of the track, and the races it provides.

Now having gone to two F1 races and two different circuits (Montreal being the other), I will never go to another one. It’s too busy, too expensive and lacking of track viewing experience that you can get going to something like an IMSA event at Mosport or a regional race at your local track.

---

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read this. If you enjoyed this, please consider liking, leaving a comment on this post, and sharing through your socials! If you are a WordPress user, please also consider subscribing (it’s completely free) to get the latest blog posts right as they come out!