From the category: sports

17 June 2026

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?






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01 July 2025

Rookie Takes: Let's talk sports

I didn't think I'd ever be the kind of person who would be emotionally affected by sports outside of UAAP (#UPFight!!!) but in the last year or so, there's been a marked shift in the kind of "content" (should I even call it content?) that I've enjoyed consuming. I'm now confidently in my sports fan era.

Antecedent Facts: It all started with the 2024 Olympics and our sports streaming subscription. What was supposed to be background noise while working and doing chores turned into full-on standing ovations in the living room. I was screaming at the screen during the swimming men's and women's finals, stayed up late to see Carlos Yulo win 2 gold medals, and suddenly had very strong opinions about countries I previously couldn’t locate on a map. In a span of two weeks, I was knee-deep in slow-mo replays of synchronized diving and learning the scoring system for fencing. 

It helped too that I suddenly became so invested in F1 and MotoGP, thanks to my husband. Sharing the same household (and the same television screen) meant that I couldn't escape these athletes and their ever-evolving narratives for each season. What started as passive viewing quickly became an emotional commitment. I found myself picking favorite riders and drivers, learning the stats, the records, the tire strategies, the team politics, the behind-the-scenes drama. 

Turns out, sports had the makings of a literary work. The arcs! The foils! The deeply flawed protagonists who were either chasing legacy or redemption! 

I guess that’s what did it for me: the stories. Beneath the medals and the podiums are people who train in obscurity, lose in silence, and sometimes win in ways that feel impossible. And in a world that often feels chaotic and unwritten, there’s something deeply reassuring, even moving, about watching someone cross a finish line or finally break a serve. 

Tennis 

I still cannot get over the Roland-Garros final matches, both for the men's and the women's. 

Let's start off with the Gauff/Sabalenka match. I'll admit, I wasn't rooting for anyone in particular between the two of them, although generally I tend to want to cheer for underdogs. So clearly, the scales were tipped slightly towards Coco for me. (It helped that her and Alex Eala were so fun together at the Italian Open!) I was so thrilled that Coco was able to pull away from that fight and absolutely dominate in the second and third sets. I thought it was going to be closer, but seeing Sabalenka crash out and visibly panic - almost as if she couldn't believe that Coco had a response to every attack - it was only a matter of time. Coco played smarter, managed better, and took complete control of the momentum. I'm glad she finally secured her second Grand Slam, and I hope she gets to #1 soon enough (or at least holds on to that #2 a little while longer.) 

But the story of Roland-Garros was definitely that Alcaraz/Sinner final. Wow. Wow. Wooow. First off, I like them both a lot. I’ve followed their rise with equal admiration: Sinner with his icy precision and quiet grit, Alcaraz with his elastic energy and wild, joyful shot-making. It was like watching two elemental forces collide: fire and ice, instinct and control. No villain, no underdog. Just two future legends climbing towards their peak, pushing each other to the brink. 

Federer was right: The game of tennis itself won that day. I wasn’t fully tuned in yet during the Federer/Nadal era. I knew them, of course, and understood the weight of that rivalry (as well as their legacy being cemented alongside Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, and ok, maybe also Andy Murray). But this was different because I was here for it, watching it unfold in real-time. And there’s something awe-inspiring about realizing you're witnessing the early chapters of a future epic rivalry, not reading about it after the fact, but holding your breath as it’s being written, point by point. The three match points. The absolute locking in. The recovery. The tiebreak. It was all ridiculously, deliciously intense. Every time I feel defeated or in a slump at work, I’m going to think of that moment: Alcaraz down 2-0, 40-0 in the game, and instead of folding, he just flipped a switch. Dialed in. Dug deep. And clawed his way back. It was defiant, almost mythic. Proof that momentum is an illusion, and that sometimes, belief is enough to change the entire narrative. 

I think I tuned in to tennis at just the right time. Excited for Wimbledon! And the US Open! 

Formula 1 

Let’s just get this out of the way: am I only watching because I have a huge, massive, completely understandable (but occasionally obsession-adjacent) crush on Carlos Sainz? No. But also… kind of. I probably wouldn’t have paid attention to the F1 races my husband was watching if it weren’t for that face. He caught my eye, and before I knew it, I was watching entire races “just to see how he did.” What started as a casual scroll turned into full-blown fandom. 

 Like I mentioned earlier, what really pulled me into sports lately, especially Formula 1, are the stories. And Carlos Sainz? The guy is a walking narrative arc; he has history, lore, aura; he's comedy and drama all in one package. He's the son of a world-renowned champion rally driver. He's had to prove that he's not just "Junior," but his own man, carving his own path outside his father's large, looming shadow. He’s been passed around the grid: Toro Rosso, Renault, McLaren, Ferrari, and now Williams. And yet, wherever he goes, the team somehow ends up better off. He’s not flashy, not always the headline, but he delivers. (He was the only non-Red Bull driver to win a grand prix in 2023! #NeverForget). So yeah, it stung a little when Ferrari announced they were letting him go. It’s the kind of plot twist that would feel too cruel if it were fiction, but somehow makes him even more compelling in real life. This is why I'm so much more invested in his "redemption arc" at Williams. He's slowly getting used to the car, and while he's been quite unlucky the past few races, it's fascinating to see a former bottom-dweller team finally rise up the ranks. The way I feel about rooting for Williams is exactly how it felt rooting for the UP Fighting Maroons back in its 0-14 era. Equal parts "delulu" and earnest, fueled by pure hope, historical pain, and a burning desire to prove everyone wrong. 

The thing is, I’ve been invested in F1 long enough now that I’m not just a Carlos Sainz "stan." I’m following so many arcs at this point, and I genuinely want to see how they all play out every season. There’s Max, trying to keep it together in the middle of Red Bull’s slow implosion (and maybe even losing the Championship). There’s Oscar Piastri quietly leading McLaren’s charge for the WDC with his ice-cold, unbothered approach. There’s Alonso, still fighting, still hoping for a good enough car to give him one last podium - maybe even one last win. There’s the beautiful chaos of Ferrari, and observing the slow, creeping realization on Hamilton’s face every week shows that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the right move. 

Then there are the rookies like Kimi Antonelli, who you can’t help but root for, and the longshots like Nico Hülkenberg and Alex Albon — both crazy talented, both so overdue for a podium it physically hurts. And there are the team principals who, in their own right, are such interesting characters as well. There’s just so much going on. So many layers. So many storylines that unfold race by race, press conference by press conference, radio message by radio message. 

And I’ve gone full spiral. Reddit threads? Read. Podcasts? Queued. Merch? Bought and purchased without guilt. Articles, interviews, fan theories? Consumed daily like vitamins. It’s kind of wild — after years of not really being a “sports person,” I suddenly get it. The thrill, the heartbreak, the deep emotional investment in people you’ll probably never meet. Is this what I’ve been missing out on this whole time? 

Which brings me to this crazy, pinch-me, almost-too-good-to-be-true-but-very-much-happening update: we’re going to watch the Suzuka Grand Prix in person!!! We’re planning a trip to Japan in late March, all timed around race weekend. Kind of an impulsive decision, but not really, since it's something we've wanted to do anyway. We just went for it, in the spirit of “why not, life is short, treat yo’ self." We’re going with friends who’ve done it before (pros, basically), so they already know the drill. Where to stay, what to do, how to get there. We’ve pencil-booked our hotel, and thank goodness we did, because prices have tripled since then. It’s insane. I’m already buzzing just thinking about the engines, the energy, and the sheer joy of yelling “LET'S GO WEEYUUUMS!" Crossing my fingers that it all goes smoothly. I've deleted my Shopee, Lazada, and Carousell apps just to avoid temptation and really save up. Can't waaait! And maybe that’s what I’ve been chasing all along: not just the thrill of the sport, but the joy of caring deeply about something. Of finding community in comment sections, of counting down to weekends, of seeing narratives play out in real time. I’m so glad I finally "unlocked" this world. 

No one put it better than Pope Leo XIV in his June 15 tweet: 

"In our competitive society, where it seems that only the strong and winners deserve to live, sport also teaches us how to lose. It forces us, in learning the art of losing, to confront our fragility, our limitations and our imperfections. It is through the experience of these limits that we open our hearts to hope. Athletes who never make mistakes, who never lose, do not exist." 

It's the thrill of watching winners and losers. Sports bring us together because overcoming setbacks is such a human experience. What a joy, what a joy. To care, to hope, to watch it all happen.
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