KIRAN GOES PLACES
Suzuka is the one every driver on the grid says they love the most. It's an old school, high speed figure of eight that punishes the smallest mistake, and I've wanted to see a car go round it in person for as long as I can remember. The thing that finally made me book was the timing. Sakura season and the Japanese Grand Prix were overlapping perfectly this year, so if there was ever a moment to do it, this was it. I flew out a week before the race without a ticket, spent the first couple of days at Lake Kawaguchiko hunting for Mount Fuji, which thankfully came out to play, and only sorted my race ticket once I was already in the country.
I ended up buying an official resale ticket on the Suzuka website on race weekend itself. The site was entirely in Japanese and a real pain to navigate, but I got there. The odd part of the plan was where I chose to stay. Suzuka circuit is about 100km, roughly an hour's drive, from Kyoto, and the city of Nagoya is much closer. But I'd left this so late that every room in Nagoya was booked out, so Kyoto it was. I took the bullet train from Mishima to Kyoto and stayed the night in a capsule hotel, which genuinely feels like sleeping in a coffin. A pillow, a light, a fan, some chargers, a couple of hangers you couldn't actually fit a shirt on, and about 30 other people in the same room going in and out all night. Not much sleep, but a 6:30am start was always the plan.
Kyoto at 6:30am, before the drive out to Suzuka.
The plan for the day was simple: get to the centre of Kyoto, hire a car, drive to Suzuka. What I didn't expect was the car. They handed me the keys to a tiny box of a thing, a little Suzuki kei car with a Kyoto plate, where the front seat is somehow huge and the back seat looks like it was made for a single very small person. I have never driven anything like it. But it had 100km of Japanese countryside to cover, and after a compulsory 7-Eleven run for the journey, jelly vitamins, an acai frozen smoothie, matcha chocolate and a frozen cup for iced coffee, my usual staple pickup, we set off.
The tiny box. Enormous in the front, comically small everywhere else.
Parking near a circuit on race day is its own adventure. I found a spot about a kilometre from the gate I needed, run by two little kids waving cars in off the road. It looked completely unofficial and completely official at the same time, they had my parking bay number, the date, and even handed me a receipt. It cost 5,000 yen, around twenty five pounds, which is roughly what I'd braced myself for. The official parking was just as expensive and further out, so I was more than happy. From there it was a fifteen minute walk up to the Spoon gate, and getting in was the smoothest entrance I've ever had at anything this size. Scan the QR code from the resale ticket, quick bag check, and you're through. I couldn't believe how easy it was.
It was 9:15 in the morning, four hours before the race, and the unreserved sections were already packed. But it's Japan, so of course it was all completely orderly. My first glimpse of the track came right after the gate, and the thing you don't appreciate watching at home is just how enormous these circuits are. My seats were all the way over in stand G, which was a proper trek across the whole site.
Four hours before lights out and the banks were already full.
Scattered around the track are fan zones with food, and the thing that got me was how reasonable everything was. At these kinds of events back in the UK they really try to rip you off, whereas here a plate of yaki soba was about four pounds. There's a main fan zone too, and I genuinely could not believe you could buy ramen and watch F1 at the same time, surely the only race in the world where that's an option. The matcha looked amazing but the queue told me to wait until Kyoto. And everywhere you looked there was sakura, cherry blossoms next to the Ferris wheel next to the fan zone. There's even a roller coaster, and I can't imagine trying to follow an F1 car while you're the one moving.
Sakura season at Suzuka. The whole place leans into it.
One of the stands had a pit stop challenge where you get to change the wheel of an F1 car, something I've always wanted to try. I can now confirm it is way harder than it looks. Just lining up the wheel gun, which is unbelievably heavy, gave me a whole new level of respect for the pit crews. It's safe to say I won't be joining them any time soon.
Harder than it looks. That wheel gun weighs a tonne.
My ticket was about a hundred and twenty pounds, which was a good middle ground compared to the eye watering prices on the famous corners. I picked stand G for two reasons. It was affordable, and it looks straight at the iconic crossover point where the cars run both above and below the circuit at the same time, which is the whole party trick of a figure of eight track and just looks brilliant in person. To get to my side you actually walk through an underpass beneath the track, which is pretty unusual. The qualifying times from the day before were written up in Japanese on a whiteboard, which I loved. Antonelli had pipped his Mercedes teammate George Russell to pole by a few tenths, with Piastri and Leclerc just behind, and our boy Lewis Hamilton lining up sixth for Ferrari.
What really stayed with me was the fans. The Japanese crowd are seriously passionate about F1 and they make an effort, matching tops, hats, flags, decorations, homemade driver cutouts, the lot. Spot the Perez fans in sombreros and Cadillac tops. Before the race the drivers did their parade, each one standing up through the roof of a truck doing a slow lap while their name boomed out over the PA, and I got a proper wave in from Lewis in the Ferrari red. The nice thing about an allocated seat is you can wander off, eat, explore, and know your spot will still be there. The people who came at dawn for the unreserved corners get incredible views but they can't move an inch all day, so having come in early, got settled and stuffed my bag with 7-Eleven snacks, I felt very smug about it, especially once the food queues turned properly ridiculous.
The fans go all in. Cutouts, flags, matching kit, the works.
Then the anthem, the formation lap with the cars weaving to warm their tyres, and the whole grid crawling past before lining up for real. And it was a race with a bit of everything. Antonelli started on pole but fluffed the getaway and dropped all the way to sixth, with Piastri taking the lead. Then a big crash for Ollie Bearman brought out the safety car, which turned out to be the best thing that could have happened for Antonelli, who used the restart to fight his way back to the front. He took a dominant win in the end, Piastri held on for second, and Leclerc completed the podium after fending off Russell in the closing laps. Lewis got pipped by Norris right at the final chicane to finish sixth. And I have to say, the sound is something television completely fails to capture. Even with the noise cancelling on my camera it was deafening.
Actual F1 cars, actual Suzuka. Louder than you'd ever believe.
A week earlier I'd landed in Japan with no ticket and no plan, and here I was driving away from Suzuka in a tiny box car having watched the race I'd wanted to see since I was a kid, during cherry blossom season, surrounded by the most passionate strangers for a day. Sometimes the best trips are the ones you don't plan properly. You just go, and let the country figure the rest out for you. If you've got something like this on your list, stop dreaming about it and book the flight. Full vlog below.