Designed by the great John Hugenholtz, Suzuka is a sprawling, high-speed monster of a grand prix circuit – and one of the few places that has David Coulthard itching to get back behind the wheel of a Formula One car.
This is what the former Red Bull Racing ace has to say to say about the track as the Japanese Grand Prix returns to its spiritual home.
“For me, Suzuka is a fantastic track. It’s one of the circuits of the year. At Monaco, I wished I was still racing, at Spa I wished I was still racing, and Suzuka will be exactly the same. It’s an awesome racetrack where you really feel like a grand prix driver.
“That’s because you just… feel it. There are meaty corners, there is no room for error and you have to take a breath at the beginning of the lap. It’s nothing like many of the modern tracks, which are a procession of point-squirt-point-squirt, where the result is down to your set-up and which car you’re driving.
“Suzuka is so different in other ways, too. We’re in the middle of an industrial area, a few hours away from the big cities, and the teams live together in the same few hotels and it really grows the camaraderie between the drivers and the team, and I guess the media as well, which makes it a special grand prix. There are some people who hate it and never really enjoy that aspect of it – I’ve always loved it.
“The lap itself is just stunning. You come past the pits and it’s downhill to Turn One, which was made famous by Ayrton Senna running into Alain Prost all those years ago. It’s flat, and you pull lateral-g as you go into Turn Two and drop a few gears to get some acceleration out into Turn Three, where you’re down a couple more gears –you haven’t even really started the lap, but you’ve been pulling three or four seconds of high lateral-g already. It’s a very narrow track as well, and you notice that when you then go through a series of sweeping left-right-left turns [the S Curves], the final part of which is blind over a crest then downhill into a dropping right-hander. It then rises like a rollercoaster up to Dunlop, which is a flat-out, completely blind corner where you feel your neck is being ripped from your shoulders. You just come over the top of that and you’re down one gear, maybe two, for a short flick into the first Degner Curve, a short blast out of that downhill into a 90-degree right-hander, made famous by Nigel Mansell dropping it in practice there in the 1980s and injuring his back in the process.
“We then go under the track, which is a figure-eight design, into a flat-out right kink and into the hairpin, which is very greasy with lots of slipping and sliding. You catch your breath, and then you run through a flat-out section of right-hander, down the hill, another right-hander and then straighten up for Spoon, which is a double left-hander. You go down two gears for the first part and down another gear for the second part. You need to get on the throttle early because you know you have a long run out of Spoon down the hill, then back up the hill approaching 130R.
“Is it flat? Is it not flat? You know, 130R really depends on the track conditions. And then you just have time to catch your breath again and you’re heavy on the brakes for a chicane that is somewhere on the right-hand side. You can’t see it when you start to brake, as it’s downhill and around a corner slightly, so it’s blind too. When you don’t know the track, you always overshoot and miss your braking point. With a little more experience, you learn to brake before you see the corner. As a chicane, it’s a non-event, but nonetheless, when you come out of it, it can be difficult to find traction. Then you drop downhill past the old pitlane entry. If it’s wet, you always have water running across the track there and have a bit of a tank-slapper. If it’s dry, it’s flat and you run onto the start-finish straight and you think to yourself, ‘Holy f***! What a lap!’
“And you look at your pitboard and see… 52 more to go. It’s absolutely brilliant.”
DC was talking to Matt Youson.
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