[Official] Japanese Grand Prix 2024: Round 4 of 24 - Grand Prix Weekend Thread

[Born Racer]

If you were to ask drivers to pin down their favourite circuits on a shortlist, you could hazard a guess that Suzuka would feature on many people’s selection as one of their top picks. The track offers up a challenging and varied range of corners – with a relentless, snaking Sector 1, a couple of high-speed flicks, flat-out bends, and a few hairpins and a slow chicane thrown in for good measure. It also has elevation change, camber change and a figure-of-eight layout.

This year, the Grand Prix moves from its traditional autumn slot to be held in Spring for the first time, held back-to-back with the Chinese Grand Prix.

It’s quite fitting that the iconic Ferris wheel sits near the circuit, as the layout itself is a thrilling attraction in itself and was a wonderful addition to the calendar back in 1987. This year, I’m delighted to be attending the race myself and sampling a slice of the action.

The history

Suzuka’s Grand Prix history does, in fact, date to 1963. The track, which sits fairly close to the city of Nagoya, held a sports car race then under the name Japanese Grand Prix, which was won by Peter Warr in a Lotus 23. A race at Fuji Speedway, near Yokohama, was run during most of the rest of the sixties and early part of the 70s, usually for sports cars.

In 1976, this turned into a Formula 1 world championship event and the inaugural race immediately brought drama, with Niki Lauda and James Hunt facing a title showdown after Lauda’s horrific accident at the Nurburgring. Lauda, along with several others, withdrew from the race citing the dangerous wet weather conditions, while Hunt sealed the 3rd place he needed for his world championship win, and Mario Andretti took his second victory and first for Lotus.

Hunt won the following year, although the race was marred by an accident in which Gilles Villeneuve and Ronnie Peterson collided and two spectators were killed.

The event then fell of the calendar until it was revived at Suzuka in 1987 – built as a Honda test track, but worth so much more.

Nigel Mansell suffered an accident in practice in his Williams, handing the title to team-mate Nelson Piquet. Gerhard Berger, won the race for Ferrari. 1988 saw a big battle between the McLaren-Hondas of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, whose rivalry would become forever associated with Suzuka for a number of events. On this occasion, Senna dropped to 14th at the start after stalling, but fought through, going on to win the race from a hobbled Prost, who had hit gearbox issues.

The next year, the rivalry got beyond heated, when Senna went for a move at the chicane and Prost turned in. It looked like they were both out on the spot, but in Senna managed to get a push and get going. He then chased down and caught Alessandro Nannini in his Benetton and beat him on track to win the race. Senna was subsequently disqualified for cutting the chicane on rejoining, a move that left many dumbfounded due to its application and the Brazilian was hurt and mystified, with Prost taking the championship. Nannini went on to claim his only win in F1.

The rancour remained right until the next year when Prost, now with Ferrari, led off the line, but Senna, still livid and still seeing red took him out on purpose at Turn 1, which he later admitted to. Nelson Piquet went on to win, with Roberto Moreno completing a Benetton 1-2 and Aguri Suzuki placing third in his Lola in what was the highest ever finishing position for a Japanese driver in a world championship Grand Prix (until Kamui Kobayashi replicated the feat in 2012,). Those remain the best finishes for Japanese drivers.

In 1991, Senna let team-mate Berger through on the last lap to take his first win for McLaren (reversing a swap he had carried out himself earlier in the race), while in 1992, Riccardo Patrese took his final F1 win, after world champion team-mate Mansell suffered an engine failure.

Senna beat Prost in 1993 (as he would go on to do in the next race in Australia for the last time), but 1994 saw a fascinating race evolve with aggregate times being adopted, as the race was split in two after heavy rain. Damon Hill took what many consider one of his finest wins, beating Michael Schumacher in those conditions. This was also the first of two successive years when there was a second race in the country, with the Pacific Grand Prix being run at Aida.

In 1995, Hill had a nightmare, though, going off several times, while Schumacher cruised to victory. He was to make up for it in 1996, though, going on to win the race and the world championship, with a lights-to-flag demonstration of excellence, the victory confirmed when team-mate Jacques Villeneuve’s race ended early.

A year later, Schumacher won in his Ferrari, from the Williams of Heinz-Harald Frentzen and his Ferrari teammate Eddie Irvine. Villeneuve was disqualified from 5th after losing an appeal for ignoring yellow flags in practice.

McLaren's Mika Häkkinen took the first of two wins in Suzuka in 1998. His title rival Schumacher had qualified on pole but stalled on the grid and had to charge through the field from the back, an endeavour which was halted when he punctured a tyre on debris, leaving Häkkinen both race winner and world champion. He repeated the rest of winning the race and the championship the following year.

Ferrari owned things at Honda's track, metaphorically-speaking, in the first half of the 2000s. In the first of these years, Schumacher took victory and the third of his wins and the first for the Scuderia. After following this with a race win the next two years, he had a scrappy run en route to eighth place in 2003, from fourteenth, colliding with Takuma Sato and never looking like he was going to threaten the front. It did (just) net him a sixth title. Rubens Barrichello, meanwhile, took the race win.

2004's event witnessed a typhoon on the Saturday, pushing the qualifying back to Sunday morning. Michael Schumacher won the race from his brother Ralf, in his Williams, and Mark Webber, in the Jaguar.

In 2005, the miscreant weather again played a part. This time, a wet qualifying session meant that several key drivers started 'out of position'. Fernando Alonso came through the field with a great move on Schumacher in 130R, while Kimi Räikkönen battled through from 17th on the grid to win, overtaking Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault on the last lap.

The next year, before Schumacher's first retirement, the Ferrari driver led, but an engine failure gave him only the remotest chance of taking the title again when reigning world champion Fernando Alonso won in his Renault.

F1 returned to Fuji in 2017, not a universally popular move by any means, as Suzuka was considered one of the best tracks, if not the best, and the Hermann Tilke redesign of what was now Toyota's track had plenty of detractors. With shades of 1976, the race had a driver's title working towards a crescendo and a young driver battling a more experienced double world champion. Fernando Alonso binned his McLaren and Lewis Hamilton took the win, looking well set to pull off the win in the last round in his first season.

2008 worked out well for Alonso. Now having defected to Renault, returning to the team with which he won his two titles, and after the now-controversial Crashgate-inflicted Singapore Grand Prix win, this one could only be purely on merit, although he did have the benefit of both Felipe Massa and Hamilton both getting penalties for collisions.

Fuji was supposed to begin alternating with Suzuka, but the economic climate put paid to Toyota's interest in continuing to bankroll the event and Suzuka became the Japanese Grand Prix base once again.

Sebastian Vettel then took over two years of control at the track, before also claiming his third straight title in 2011 with a 3rd place, while Jenson Button tool the spoils. Vettel won again in 2013, but the big result was Kamui Kobayashi becoming the first homegrown driver since Aguri Suzuki to finish on the podium in Japan.

2014 bore the most recent fatality F1 has seen, when Jules Bianchi went off the road in his Marussia in very wet conditions and hit a crane which was recovering the stricken Sauber of Adrian Sutil. He went into a coma and died nine months after the event. For what it's worth, Lewis Hamilton won the race from Sebastian Vettel.

A year on and Hamilton passed Rosberg, who was undergoing some technical difficulties, near the start, eventually winning from him and Vettel, while a year later Rosberg turned the tables and won from Max Verstappen and Hamilton. It meant that Rosberg would be in an unassailable championship lead if Hamilton won all four remaining races and he placed runner-up in all of them. This is what eventually happened en route to Rosberg's title.

In 2017, Hamilton was back to winning ways in Japan, with Verstappen again second and his Red Bull teammate Daniel Ricciardo third. Sebastian Vettel had technical issues before the start and soon retired.

It was advantage Mercedes again in 2018, with another win for Hamilton, followed home by Valtteri Bottas and Verstappen, while Bottas won the next year, from Vettel and Hamilton.

After a two year hiatus due to COVID, the Grand Prix returned to Japan in 2022 with a win for Max Verstappen, pursued by teammate Sergio Pérez and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, while the reigning world champion won last year too, from the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

The track



Other information

Circuit length: 5.807km
Number of laps: 53
Race distance: 307.471km
Race lap record: 1:30.983 (Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes - 2019)
Dry weather tyre compounds: C1, C2 & C3
First Japanese Grand Prix: 1963
First Japanese Grand Prix at this circuit: 1963
First World Championship Japanese Grand Prix: 1987
First Grand Prix on current configuration: 2003

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