The defeat of Schumi
... or, theoretically, Schumi still has the chance of becoming the Champion one last time. If he wins the next race and Alonzo gets 0 points. I am not a big fan of Schumi, but still it was a cruel way of losing the title. Engine trouble...
Anyway, it was a perfect weather for watching F1. Having not succeded in getting tickets for reserved seats we had to do with the non-reserved ones. So, having heard rumors that unless you went there at least during the qualification day, it would be hard to get somewhere to sit, we left Tokyo station at past 7 am. Saturday morning. Kuma, Shota (Colleauge from TP) and Kenta (Arrived from Sendai 5.30 am. the same morning). The bullet train took us to Nagoya in less than 2 hours. At 10 am. the doors to Tokyu Hands opened up, and we could get a giant sheet to use as a seat "reservation".
11 am., we got off the train at Shiroko station, a small village in Mie prefecture. Getting off, I couldn't believe that 150,000 people were supposed to pass here the next day. It was already crowded with people, and it wasn't even race day. Seeing the queue for the buses and taxis, we decided pretty fast that walking to the circuit would be faster. We were told 6 km and around one hour. Piece a cake! You even heard the whining sound of the machines warming up, all the way to the station. Then it couldn't be that far. But the engine sound reaching 6km. Pretty impressive. Which also made us buy some ear plugs in a drug store on the way.
One hour later, we arrived at Suzuka circuit. Time to find a good spot! Walking around for a while, adding another 2 or 3 km for the record to keep. Finally found a spot good enough for the qualification race, reckoning that if we stayed for a while after the race, we might be able to find a better spot for the main event, we settled down in the 200R curve between the hairpin and the spoon curve., just in time for the qualifications.
The roaring sound from the main stretch at the grand stand was heard all the way to our curve. Then you heard them work their way through the gears, whee, whee, whee, whee in a higher and higher pitch, breaks, gear down, gear up, accelerate. Then, pushing the breaks to the limits, without locking them, for the sharp hairpin, then whee, whee, whee, we still couldn't see them but you could follow them easily by the bee-ish agressive sound and suddenly they where all over us! Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, before you'd known what struck you, these crazy guys in nice helmets and colorful built-for-speed-and-nothing-but-speed-horse-power-overdosed supermachines had blasted past you leaving you half deaf, half scared to death, but amazed and with nothing but a "wooooooooooaaaaaahhhhhh" left in your brain. After the first brain lockout I got my acts together and got my camera up for some shooting. It took some laps to get the right settings. They are fast, them little bastards. Finally, the shutter time set to around 1/1250 I could get some unblurred shots.
Qualifications over, our hunt for a better place started. Our target was the spoon curve, and besides walking there, some more kms, it didn't that very long before finding a good spot. Spreading out our 890 Yen sheet from Tokyu Hands, collecting some rocks and filling PET bottles with sand as countermeasures for the wind, our land claim was final. The view wasn't that bad at all. All preparations for the final race complete!
Returning to Shiroko station, circumstances hadn't improved at all, so nothing else to do than use what man has been using for ages, long before even thinking about chasing each other around for 53 laps in cars reading Red bull, Marlboro or Panasonic, leg power. It was getting dark and before getting half way back, it was pitch black. But at least we were accompanied by a couple of thousands others taking the same trail, and a full moon.
Having had under consideration sleeping at the circuit, the wind and some rain showers made us rethink, and having Nagoya less than an hour from Shiroko, we decided that a hotel would be a much nice way to spend the night. The only problem was that, some of the other 150,000 visitors had thought of it too, and even made reservations. We hadn't. Instead, we ended up in a "manga kissaten", a kind of cafe with mainly mangas, comic books. You rent this litte room, with a nice chair, a computer, tv and spend some hours there doing whatever you like to. We decided to sleep. 6 am. Kuma woke me up. I'd slept like a baby. Comfy chair! Could've stayed there the whole day, but today was the race day! Taking the elevator up to 4h floor, to take a bath and freshen up, then get to the station for a breakfast and the train for Shiroko. We waited for Kenta, who stayed at a friend of his, for a while but not being able to reach him, we left. He had his own ticket and our guess was that he'd overslept.
In Shiroko, something crazy met us. The queue for the bus was longer than any queues I've ever seen. Like a giant snake, it stretched some blocks away to take some right turns and return on the other side of the small square outside the station. With stiffened legs from the walks last day, we were not in the mood for another 6 kms on foot. Queueing up, we moved pretty fast, but since I'm not the person who likes to 1) Wait and 2) Queue I got restless and Shota wasn't late to agree that taking a walk wouldn't be that bad at all. With a Kenta still sleeping somewhere in Nagoya, Kuma not as stupid as the 2 of us, decided to stay in the queue, and suddenly we were up for a challenge, now we had to beat Kuma to Suzuka. Having walked about 5 minutes, it suddenly struck us that we'd left the tickets in my bag that Kuma carried. Laughing at our stupidity and that we hadn't got to far, we returned to Kuma and grabbed our tickets.
We arrived pretty much at the same time at Suzuka circuit. Except the 20 minutes or so we waited in line before deciding to take the walk instead and the 10 minutes it took to return for the tickets, the Kuma way wasn´t that much slower than ours. But I don't think that I'd survived waiting in queue for that one hour or so I'd had to if we didn't walk. I think we made the best individual choices, and everyone was happy!
To fight our way from the main gate to our seat took it's share of energy and time, and when we finally reached our spot, we were pretty out of it. 2 1/2 hour of rest before the race start. In an October sun acting like it was the middle of July or so. Hot, hot, hot.
Kenta arrived an hour or so before the race. Overslept, just as we guessed. He'd been running parts of the way from the station, cutting almost half the time getting comments like "Look, that guy's running" on the way.
Race start! Once again, you'd hear them far away, whee, whee, whee, whee, then the dark sound of breaks cutting trough the air, and again, whee, whee, whee, high pitch, and there, around the corner accelerating like bullets out of a barrel, then, the barking sound of brakes just before throwing themselves into the spoon, whee, whee, accelerating, gear down, barking brakes, whee, whee, out of the spoon and onto the stretch.
A really exciting fight, with Schumi getting up in the lead early in the race, Massa keeping the others down to get Schumi some distance to the others. Alonzo passed Massa pretty early though, during the first pit stop I think, and soon chased and closed in on Schumi. I don't know the others that well, but at least I kept an eye on Kimi, who climbed pretty fast from his start position at 11th. I even got a shot of his name on the helmet =) Can you see it?
And as you probably know, Schumi had to retire due to some engine failure. A fast pit stop, getting on the tracks in front of Alonzo for the last ten laps or so, thing looked all good for the German geniues, when there was a sudden smoke cloud from the engine, and the race was over for him. Unfair, but that's the way life goes. 
The way back to Shiroko, was of course another put-one-leg-before-the-other stretch. Finally arrived in Tokyo at around 22 pm. Kenta continued on for Sendai and arrived at midnight. Checking google earth at home, from the station to the spoon curve, we walked around 7.4 km. Adding to that some kms in the circuit area, we'd walked some 35 km during the weekend. That's about Yotuya in Tokyo to Yokohama. Legs hurts.
