2016 Suzuka Circuit Open House: Let's try and push the limits of that press pass!

"Flavien Vidal" (flyingfrenchy)
03/19/2016 at 09:00 • Filed to: None

Last week-end started like many others, my wife trying to get me to drive her somewhere: “I want to see my friend... She is in Suzuka, maybe you can drop me and check out if they have something going on at the track?”. She knows the words to convince me: racetrack, cars and... well... I’ll keep the third one to myself.

After a quick check on Suzuka’s website, it appeared that the whole week-end was some kind of open-house called “2016 Motorsports Fan Thanks Day”, Jean Alesi and his son were going to be there, probably driving something, a bunch of demo runs of MotoGPs, Super Formulas and SuperGTs were going to take place also. It was time to charge my camera, take a good night sleep and on sunday morning, way too late, we left for Suzuka...

As soon as I got there, first thing I got in mind was: “I wish I had a press pass... Can’t access anything here and it’s crowded.” Since my wife hadn’t left yet, I thought we could try and find the press center and ask for press credentials... On the second day of the event, at 11am... Looking professionnal 101!! With my wife helping out in Japanese, after they triple checked passed articles I wrote and looked at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , they granted me a category “C” Press Pass... I only had access to the Paddock (everyone could go that day) and to the Pits, all the way to the Pit Lane, but not to the Pit Lane itself... Yeah!! What the hell was I gonna do with that?? I tried to explain them that it really wouldn’t help me do a good coverage, if I were stucked inside the pits and couldn’t access the track at all, but a “C” Pass is all I was going to get and I had to deal with that. Oh well...

My wife left and I started wandering around the pits, taking pictures of cars and people. Very quickly I noticed that it was quite a relaxed day, wives of team members hanging around with their kids and so on, so I decided to take a few liberties with these credentials...

There was a Civic-only friendly race, which I missed unfortunately

The icon that is the Calsonic R35 GTR. In 2008, it won almost everything during the SuperGT season

Oh... that’s something I want to see drive around the track!

Super Formula brake rotors looked really small...

Drivers tend to get through a few of these every season in Super Formula

Now THAT looks mean!

Mr Baguette waiting for the demo race

Then around noon, all the cars and bikes that were racing moved to the grid for a walk around the track, allowing spectators to look at the cars up close, get autographs from the racers and take a whole bunch of pictures all over the track and the pit lane.

After that, it was time for everyone to take a break and grab a bite. Weird long french fries were extremely popular for some reasons. I aimed for the food stand with the least amount of people queueing: some kind of german-wurst seller, that was utterly deserted but made some pretty good sausages! Props to him! He could never compete against the long fries guys though... If you wanted you could also queue for a good 30 minutes and get a 1 minute ride in a Mitsubishi Delica diesel, that spent ALL DAY, going up and down this 45 degree ramp.

Considering how overly safe and cautious japanese are behind the wheels (by “safe and cautious” I mean REALLY slow because they are all constantly on their cell phones while driving... or are simply way too old to drive), I’m not sure what Mitsubishi was trying to prove with this stunt but well... to each his own. I was nonetheless very impressed by the fact that the Delica they used did this for 10 hours in a row without any single problem.

Around 1.30pm it was time for the Super Formula race to take place! Nothing much to say here, just a few shots I took with my cheap-ass zoom lens!

Kawaiiiiiiii!!!!

And to finish the top3 winners of the race... I was kind of surprised at the massive difference of speed/skills among racers in this series. The race only lasted 20 minutes, but some almost got lapped!

Then came the time for a “handicap race” with two Honda S660s (driven by Jean Alesi and his son... Apparentely they LOVED that little thing and I think they are honest about it as these are a blast to hoon!), two Honda Civic Type-R and one 2017 NSX. Cars start with a certain amount of time between them, the two S660 go first, the Type-Rs go 15s after and 5/10s after that, the NSX leaves. The goal is for the S660 to stay in the lead until the end of the lap, without getting passed by the Civics or the NSX. Fairly boring to watch to be honest, if not for Jean Alesi at the end, who decided to cut the chicane through the grass without even lifting, in order not to get beaten by his son. They both still got passed by the NSX that finished first...

Finally, I went back to the pit lane for the final events. The big guns were out!! On the menu: new and old SuperGT cars sharing the track, and finally Jean Alesi at the wheel of an F1/87/88c (Gerhard Berger’s old racecar) and his motherf***ing lucky son at the wheel of a Tyrrell-Ford 018 (his father’s old racecar in 1990 or so). Anyway, let’s start with these extremely loud SuperGT cars!

When compared to these 3, the F1 cars were almost quiet!

Now with Alesi and his son... You have to keep in mind that the motherf***ing lucky kid that is Giuliano Alesi, can’t even drive himself to races yet because guess what: He is only 16!! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu*k me!! (Yes, I am insanely jealous of him. I’ll make sure to get mad at my father for not becoming a F1 racer next time I see him...).

Anyway, picture time!

Lots of rubber...

Time for both to get in the cars...

Then after a couple of laps, it was time for them to get back into the pits to share their feelings. I was quite surprised by Jean Alesi, who, despite being with a Japanese spouse for many years, didn’t know much japanese other than “Arigato Gosaimasu!!”. His son was better though, not fluent, but much better... It made me feel a bit better about my lack of skills in Japanese. I’m not the only one who sucks as a husband for not speaking my wife’s language correctly yet!

“Arigato Gosaimasu!”

“Yeah, he still can’t say a word in Japanese... My mother hates that...”

I hope you enjoyed this little impromptu coverage of Suzuka’s open house. It was free of charge to enter, and ended up being a lot of fun to watch! Sorry to the people in charge of Suzuka’s press center for largely abusing the press credentials they nicely gave me, but really, it was totally worth it! Hopefully they let me cover proper races after that...