A Weekend at Suzuka

If you had told me ten years ago that I would one day fly to another country to watch a sporting event, I would have laughed. Not because I disliked sports. I simply did not think I possessed that particular kind of religious zeal.

I understood traveling for food. For museums. For history. For theme parks. For books, even. But sports? Flying overseas to watch a race that would be over in two hours? That seemed like something other people did.

And yet, this March, I found myself in Japan, with my husband, wearing shirts and caps I’ve amassed over the years, signaling my devotion to #55 and his many teams (Williams, Ferrari, McLaren, Renault). Totems that signaled my genuine affection not just for one driver but for the whole spectacle that is F1.

Somewhere along the way, I had become one of those people.

This is our third trip to Japan together, and this time, it was built around a single goal: watching the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka Circuit. After months of planning train routes, studying maps, and convincing ourselves that spending all four days (from Thursday to Sunday) at the Circuit would be worth it, we found ourselves standing among thousands of fans making the pilgrimage to one of motorsport’s most iconic venues.

One of the many things I realized was this: Formula 1 on television does not adequately convey speed. At Suzuka, the cars seem to arrive out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. The sound reaches you first, then the car flashes past, and before you can fully process what happened, the next one is already approaching. Corners that look manageable on screen suddenly appeared impossibly fast in person.

It was such a thrill getting to watch everything that I only get to see on screen. Free Practice 1, 2, and 3, Qualifying, and, of course, the Race itself. Even the feature races were exciting. This weekend was only one out of twenty-four races. It will not heavily decide the eventual champions, at least not yet. Every session will be fleeting. But this fleeting nature is precisely why it felt like every single moment is important. Especially for us, who won’t get to catch any of the next races this season in person. It will probably be a while before we can fly to another track again. I knew to take it all in and revel in the chaos and excitement right as it was happening. Before you know it, the next race will be happening, and Suzuka will be forgotten. Before you know it, we’ll be back on our couches, reminiscing about this very weekend.

Our tickets were in Grandstand B2, right along Turn 1. We saw all the action just right after the lights went out. We knew Ferrari had good starts but I was so psyched that Oscar led after the first turn. Our grandstand had so many Aussies, so the crowd around us was roaring when he overtook the Ferraris and the Mercs. We were lucky to have gotten FM radios to listen to the English commentary. favorite teams, Williams and Red Bull, weren't doing so well, but to be honest, I actually didn’t mind. To actually see and hear all these cars in motion? Chills, literal chills. My husband and I both had tears in our eyes because we couldn't believe we were actually seeing them run past us.

Is this what all sports fans have been chasing, all along? What I’ve been missing out on? Not the results themselves, but the chance to inhabit a moment, alongside fellow devotees, before it all becomes a memory? On television, every race blends into the next. There is always another practice session, another qualifying hour, another Sunday race. At Suzuka, every session felt finite. Once FP1 ended, it was gone. Once qualifying was over, that was it. I found myself paying attention to things I would normally ignore on a broadcast: the support races, the trackside interviews, even the downtime between sessions. And the fans! Japanese fans go all in with their fandom. The costumes, the fan “props”, and just their whole vibe. It was sooo much fun to see all of it. We had traveled all this way. It felt wasteful not to enjoy every part of it.

Honestly, an unexpected highlight of the F1 weekend for us was Thursday. We unexpectedly caught an Aston Martin/Honda event that was about to start, so we waited in line to check it out. To our surpise, it was a small fan meet featuring F1 2009 World Champion, Jenson Button, who was Aston Martin's ambassador this year. We actually got to see him! And even better, because I was wearing an Aston Martin Suzuka exclusive cap, I was selected to get an autograph! Incredibly lucky would be an understatement for that whole afternoon. We got him to sign my cap and my notebook, and the best part? I was even featured on the Aston Martin F1 Instagram page, while I was beside Jenson!

Aside from that, we also caught all the driver interviews on Friday and Saturday morning. We lined up at the Nagoya train station at 5:50 am! Just to catch the interviews that started at 9:30 am! Seeing Carlos Sainz on stage, a few feet away from me, felt so surreal. Not life-changing, not earth-shattering. But just one of those moments where my brain briefly struggled to reconcile reality with something that had previously existed only through a screen. Same way I felt for all the other driver interviews, to be honest. Before that weekend, they were all “characters” in an ongoing story that unfolded every other weekend. Now, I saw a little glimpse of their humanity, even if only through a few jokes and silly remarks. I don’t know them any more than I did before I went there. Maybe I knew them even less (some were more charming than I thought). But they were real, and I was there. And it felt great.

I was so happy about Kimi’s win. He's my driver this season; I enjoy seeing drivers find their footing and rising to the occasion when it matters. Seeing the podium celebration was so unexpectedly moving. It’s quite an exciting feeling to be there, surrounded by thousands of people cheering as the champagne sprays. Everyone – even the non-Mercedes fans – was excited and happy to be there.

The food at Suzuka was fantastic – to no one’s surprise, obviously. Every stall we tried was good and reasonably priced, which isn’t something you can say about any major sporting event. Our favorite was the Heineken booth, where you could get a souvenir Suzuka aluminum cup for ¥400 and a free cooler if you bought six cans. Watching Formula 1 with a cold beer in hand? No notes. The only downside of the entire weekend was the transportation situation. Despite Japan having one of the best transit systems in the world, Suzuka weekend completely overwhelmed it. Every day, the choice was either to queue for hours or walk several kilometers to a less crowded station. For two days, we ended up walking almost 6km each way. Thankfully, we were with friends who had done Suzuka before and knew all the shortcuts. Honestly, though, even the walks became part of the fun. We spent them talking about the sessions, comparing photos (we had different tickets and seats), and reliving the weekend while it was still happening.

Sports fandom often looks irrational from the outside. And maybe it is. It asks a lot of people. Time. Money. Energy. Attention.

But standing among thousands of strangers making the same “pilgrimage,” surrounded by our friends, I finally understood why people do it. You are not traveling for two hours of racing. You are traveling to be part of a community that exists only briefly, assembles around a shared obsession, and then disappears until the next race.

The race itself is the reason everyone comes, but the real high point is everything that happens around it.

On to the planning the next! Maybe, Australia?