A friend’s friend is a semi-professional race car driver. He was doing some test runs with his Porsche GT and we were invited to hang around the pit. The event took place at Fuji Speedway which is near Gotemba (at the foot of Mt. Fuji) and has been renewed to accomodate the Japanese Grand Prix. Formula One will be moving here from Suzuka next year. We couldn’t have picked a worse day to drive out there. I left the house at 8am and got there at 2pm. The traffic was horrible, perhaps the worse I’ve ever experienced. It was a crawl almost all the way out there. It took me 2 hours just to get onto the Tomei Expressway. We were supposed to meet at 11am so we could drive our cars on the track (they let you do it at certain times) but it was too late by the time I got there. One good thing was today I saw a ton of roadsters!

(1) This black NB was spotted just after I left the house this morning. You can’t see in this picture but the driver was reading a newspaper as he drove. Must have been an auto transmission (2) Close to Gotemba when the traffic actually started to move, I saw an SG Limited just like the one I used to drive. It’s very rare to spot an SG because there were only 400 released in Japan (3) Right after, a Galaxy Gray NC passed by me. The first time to ever spot the same car as mine. Nice looking car, isn’t it?

(1) As there were no official races happening today, only test runs, the place was deserted. Empty. There’s a restaurant/cafeteria where you could stay warm and watch the races. You could see the hairpin turns of the track from the restaurant window (2) Only a handful of people in the pit area. Any track ready car could run in the test race regardless of class. A March and a Vitz were racing beside Ferraris, Porsches and a large number of roadsters (3) This is the main straight in front of the grandstand. The track is 4.8km and this straight is 1.5km long, some of these cars were hitting 300km.

Here’s a panorama of the view from the restaurant window. Too bad is was cloudy, otherwise you could see Mt. Fuji there on the right. Original size (1871 X 572)

(1) The Porsche coming into the Pit (2) Making some adjustments.

(1) An SG Limited was on the track as well. The second one seen today (2) Here it is catching up to an NA (3) And here’s a Ferrari closing in on the SG.

NAs are still the most popular lightweight sports car.

For some reason, I only took pictures of the roadsters…

After dropping into a nearby onsen and then having dinner, we split up and headed home at 8pm. I was driving alone tonight and decided to take the 246 instead of the Tomei. The trip took about 3.5 hours but sometimes I prefer the “ippan doro” to the “kosoku doro”. In the Japanese countryside along the road, it’s an endless sea of huge pachinko parlors, love hotels, family restaurants and shopping centres all flashing giant gaudy neon signs. It’s like Las Vegas all the way home. Crank up the stereo and enjoy the view. I got home at 11:30pm and am totally exhausted. I’ve already fallen asleep twice while writing this.