Toro Rosso expecting better race in Japan this year

If the Singapore Grand Prix represents everything that’s new and shiny about Formula 1, the next round in Japan is definitely Old Skool with no artifice required in the shape of artificial lights or Safety Cars to create a great motor racing weekend.

The Suzuka circuit is the daddy of them all with seventeen great corners – okay, maybe sixteen plus a silly chicane. It’s up there with Spa-Francorchamps, Monza and Silverstone and probably beats those three in terms of the challenges it offers. This will be the twenty second time the Japanese Grand Prix has been staged here in the unprepossessing industrial town of Suzuka, although it’s a great place to shop for trick bits for your Japanese cars and motorbikes, if you have a big enough suitcase to take them home. The more picturesque but less charismatic Mount Fuji track was home to the race for a total of four years, including the famous 1976 race, when James Hunt finished third to take the world title. For much of its life Suzuka staged the title deciding race – a total of eight times in face - often in acrimonious circumstances, especially when it came to the Prost-Senna feud.

The circuit was designed by Dutchman John Hugenholz as a test track for Honda back in 1962, where the company tested its cars and motorbikes and for F1 drivers it provides an incredible test of their own abilities and courage. Apart from the aforementioned silly chicane at the end of the lap, most of the 5.807 kilometres of the longest track on the calendar is fast and flowing: get in wrong going through the Esses shortly after the start and you are still paying the price several corners later, while the 130R, although modified for safety reasons is still an awesome high speed sphincter clencher. It is also the only circuit which features a figure-of-eight layout, but don’t worry, the cars don’t actually cross the same bit of road, using a flyover section instead! Next to the circuit is an Amusement Park which like the Singapore track, boasts a giant Ferris wheel. Some enterprising photographers used to calculate the time it took for one of the pods on the wheel to reach the top, in order to get a fantastic overhead shot of the start of the Grand Prix. However, you could hear the cries of frustration the year the start had to be aborted and the giant wheel reached the bottom of its circle by the time the cars left the grid!

Last year’s race was memorable for Scuderia Toro Rosso, but maybe not for the right reasons: both our boys ended up on first name terms with the staff in the circuit medical centre after practice crashes and then Jaime had a huge shunt at the 130R during the race. There was plenty of bodywork damage, which we will be hoping to avoid this year. As our team principal Franz Tost commented at the end of the 2009 event: "I know this is a very expensive country, and that was certainly the case for us this weekend!"