Arriving at Mobility Resort Motegi the excitement levels were starting to rise as we entered the south gate. The track is located in the mountains surrounded by thick forest. The main entry road rises into the hills with the forest walls lining the road.
The bus dropped us off in the southern carpark. It's a short walk to the main entry point of the track. Gordon our host tells us to meet them at 4:15pm outside the Honda Collection Hall. The rest of the day is up to us. After our visit to the Honda collection Hall we enter the circuit from the East Gate, which was a quick and easy process, they scan your QR code and in you go. No bag searches, camera checks or scanning you with metal detectors like at Phillip Island. They are very trusting people the Japanese.
The main entrance to the track is through the Mobi plaza. This is where most of the buildings are and they have fun park out front with go carts, games, a zip line and other things that we didn't have time for. The plaza is lined with food stands and merchandise. There is an ATM machine here, we know because we needed some Yen to buy beer tickets.
After our visit to the Honda Collection Hall we started walking towards "Z" grandstand where our seats were. All the tree's and grass around the circuit is eye poppingly green, that tells me they get a lot of rain. Rain was predicted but we were hoping for the best.
Grandstands
There are four main grandstands at Motegi. There are two sets of grandstands on the main straight(A and V) and 2 sets of grandstands on the back straight(G and Z). None of the grandstands have a roof, so you are open to the weather, bring sunscreen and wet weather gear, it rains quite a lot at Motegi. Anyone can access the stands on friday and saturday but on Sunday you will have to show your pass to get in. You do have seat numbers but you can pretty much sit anywhere if no one is sitting there.
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| Dark Green is general admission view points, blue is grandstands. |
A Grandstand - this is the worst grandstand in my opinion. The oval track is in front of the stand then the V grandstand is in front of that then the main road racing circuit. Views from this grandstand are 250m back from the race circuit. You need binoculars if you get seating here. Seating here is the standard plastic seats. Toilets, food and merch is close by behind the stand.
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Photo from A Grandstand overlooking, Oval track and then V Grandstand in front Joel Kelso#66 Moto3. Photo from A stand with 500mm lense on D500, equivalent to 750mm Full frame not cropped. |
V Grandstand - If you absolutely must sit in a grandstand on the start finish straight then this grandstand is the best pick. It sits right at the front of the track as close as possible to the circuit. Seats here are the standard plastic seats. There are 6 sections from V1 to V6, V4 sits right at the start finish line and V4 to V6 are right in front of the pit garage's. It probably costs a bit more but it would be a far better option than A Grandstand. There are good amenities just behind it on the oval circuit with plenty of food and drink options. I think V4 or V5 would be the best pick, V5 is viewing the starting grid.
G Grandstand - This grands stand sits at the end of the back straight and on the inside of the circuit at turn 11, with Z Grandstand on the opposite side of the track. Seating here is on tiered wooden planks. There's no big screen to look at here(unless your in the curved section then you have to turn around to see it) and you can only see the back straight and turn 11. The end of this stand curves around turn 11. There's no food or beer stands at this grandstand either.
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| Photo from Z Grandstand looking at G Grandstand |
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| Fabio Quartararo in FP2 from G stand at 480mm |
Z Grandstand - This grandstand sits opposite G grandstand on the outside of the circuit at the end of the back straight and turn 11. You can also see turn 13 and part of the start straight. There is a large TV screen across from this stand at the top of G Grandstand. The seating in this stand is also tiered wooden planks. This grandstand seemed to be the most popular and was nearly full on Sunday. We had tickets in this grandstand. It started to lightly sprinkle rain for about 20 minutes on friday morning and that was the end of it, just enough to make things damp.
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| Views from Z stand, turn 11. |
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| Alex Rins#42 @ 210mm from Z Stand |
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| Jack Miller#43 @200mm |
General Admission Viewing
General admission viewing was generally fairly good although you can generally only see 2 or 3 corners from any location. We did a anticlockwise lap of the circuit on friday to have a look at every vantage point and we found out of the thirteen turns on the track there's no views from T1 to T5 due to the oval circuit being in the way, from T6 to T9 you can view the track, but you are a fair distance back as there are large run off areas. You need to get in early for a good spot as people will peg down a tarp and stake their spot and then not actually be there friday or saturday and just turn up on Sunday, taking up the space.
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| Views of T6, T7 and T8. |
It's quite a long way walking around the whole circuit so some hydration was required for the walk.
The inside of T9 looked ok, inside of the track at 7. The back straight was also a good location all the way along as it is elevated and you can see across to turns 8,9,10. The views of the circuit for general admission is not blocked by high fences like at Sepang, Malaysia which is good especially if taking photo's so you get a better view. Almost all viewing spots are elevated above the circuit.
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| Back Straight near T10 |
We noticed these manhole covers in our travels around the circuit. Pretty neat to have your own circuit name made into the manhole cover. The Japanese seem big on this sort of thing.
After our lap of the track we needed some rehydration and have a rest. It is a long way walking around Motegi. We sat in the A grandstand for a beer or three where we met a couple of other Aussies that we chatted to for a while.
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| Rehydration stop. Sitting in A grandstand watching the moto3 FP session, I was glad we didn't get tickets here. It's a long way back from the circuit. Most other punters here had binoculars I noticed. |
Food Stands
There were plenty of food options to choose from with 4 different locations you could buy food. The largest of the stands with the most choice is located behind the main Grandstand in the Mobi plaza. There also is a good selection behind the V Grandstand which had some micro brewery beers on tap.
The third place you can get food is behind Z Grandstand. Plenty of options here and we got some really nice beers on tap. Sorry no food stand photo's.......we had to keep hydration levels up.
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| Y700 or $7Au for a full strength craft beer on tap at the GP. Bloody awesome beer too. |
The last and smallest option was around turn 8-9. This is a general admission area. I saw 1 beer truck and about 4 food vans so not a lot to choose from but better than nothing.
There was plenty of choice in food options from Japanese to Western food all at fairly reasonable prices. Saturday morning we were a little hung over after we ended up at an Irish bar the previous night, and Dave decided to get this massive hotdog. He got it cut in half and it was a foot long each. Just about none of the store workers spoke english, so there was lots of pointing at stuff followed by 1 or 2 fingers for how many we wanted. No app required, seemed to work pretty well.
You are also allowed to take food into the circuit. We did that on Sunday, we bought sammiches and snacks from the 7-11 for less than $10. Food is so cheap in Japan even at inflated MotoGP prices.
Merchandise(Merch)
There is really only one location to buy merchandise and that's from the Mobi Plaza behind the main A Grandstand. There are plenty of trade stands here with all bike manufacturers and brands represented. I was told to buy my daughters some merch or I would be a dead man. Messaging my daughter back and forth with photos of the merch I at least bought the right stuff and she was happy.
Funnily enough we met the same guy that sold me the Fabio Quartararo T-shirt at last years Sepang, Malaysian GP. He was an Aussie and recognised us straight away, so it was good to be able to talk to him in english and have a chat, made it so much easier than pointing at stuff.
We wandered around the trade stands looking at different things, grabbed some more food and hydration packs.....
The Honda stand had the winning Suzuka 8 Hour bike, ridden to victory by Johan Zarco on display, very kewl.
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| Suzuka 8 Hour Winning Honda Fireblade |
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| Supreme Moto athlete meets supreme hops athlete. |
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| I survived Honda's widow maker.....As I went to go up old mate said in a thick Japanese accent "Don't touch the bike". I said that's ok, I don't want to die today. |
You see a few strange things when wandering around the track. Your not supposed to bring bikes or scooters into the circuit but we did see a few of them getting around inside the circuit.
This bloke came up the hill in a cloud of two stroke smoke, he would have stunk of it.
Marshalls huts are these cool little wooden houses.
Photography Locations
There are a few places where you can get some nice action photos from. There are also places where you can't get photos from, turns 1-5 are pretty much off limits as there are no track viewing locations on these turns due to the oval circuit. Turns 6,7,8 are a long way back from the fence and I didn't even attempt to take photos here as I would have been at 500mm and they still would have been small in the photo.
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| Turn 6 at back, turn 7 centre and turn 8 at front. |
Turn 9 was shooting from inside the turn and elevated but I didn't take photo's here either, it was also some distance back from the track.
Turn 10 is the hairpin bend before the back straight. This is a great spot to get photos from as they come into, around and out of the bend. I managed to get a few good shots here, checking the focal lengths I was between 400-500mm for most of the shots with some cropping. Lots of photographers here and many with 600mm lenses. |
| Johann Zarco#5 Castrol Honda @ 410mm |
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| Marco Bezzecchi #72 Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team @ 500mm |
Turn 11 and the final braking area of the back straight is a good spot to get photos', both from the inside of the track in G grandstand and on the outside from Z Grandstand. You are very close to the track in Z stand 200-350mm I used and from G stand I was at 500mm. The MotoGP riders are braking so hard into T11 that their brake rotors were glowing red hot.
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| The 'Martinator', Jorge Martin #89 Prima Pramac Ducati with red hot brake rotors. |
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| Remy Gardner #87 Monster Energy Yamaha |
Sprint Race
We sat in our grandstand to watch the Sprint. It was a fairly close affair between Pecco, Marquez and Bastianini. Enea over took Mark in front of us with only a couple laps to go 0.349s covered the top 3 in the sprint race as the chequered flag dropped.
RACE DAY
Moto3 was again a freight train of bikes trying to win, Madmen the lot of em. David Alonso won the Moto3 World Championship with a class display winning the race. He stopped in front of us and they put on the #1 plate, gold helmet and he engaged some goon riding on his very first mini bike around the track until he crashed it.
Then just as Moto2 was about to get underway a shower of rain came over throwing the teams and tyre choice into chaos. Some riders went with slicks and others were on wets. Japanese hero Ai Ogura fought it out with Manuel Gonzalez the later the eventual winner.
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| Ai Ogura#73 |
The main MotoGP race blew out to be a bit processional with Pecco 1st, Martin 2nd and Marquez 3rd. Over 3 seconds covered the top 3 riders with not many overtakes.
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| Pecco Bagnaia #63 Ducati Lenovo |
It was over all too soon and we were headed back to the bus. But before that we walked up the track under the bridge to the start finish line and pit garages.
We could hear a lot of singing behind us, turning around we saw some heavily lubricated Pecco Bagnaia fans flag waving and being larrikins.
By the time we got to the podium the celebrations were long over and they were in pack up mode trying to get everything ready to be shipped to Australia for the next round. Peering over the pit wall we could still see a few of the bikes out so I grabbed a few snaps of them before they were put away.
We took a break at the back of V stand, the beers were all done but I got a Coke and told old mate to keep the change. He chased me down to give me my money back. The Japanese are just so polite.
We sat in the V stand hospitality area and knocked down a few Suntory whiskeys and chatted. What a way to end the day at MotoGP with my older bro.
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| Whisky face |
It's a wrap
So what was the Japanese MotoGP like? It was pretty bloody good actually. The facilities are very good. Clean toilets, plenty of food and drink stands, better than Phillip Island but that wouldn't be hard. You can't see as much of the track as you can at Phillip Island though, but that's what the big screen is for. Food and beer was very good and very cheap in comparison. I spent just under 3K on the trip all up for a week away in Japan including accommodation and transport(flights & trains) and food, beers/whiskey and merch/presents for the kids.
The weather was very kind to us and was around 20-26°C the entire time we were there, we wore shorts and t-shirts almost the entire time. It can rain quite a lot in Motegi but we were lucky and only had 2 brief showers. So maybe take a poncho or umbrella.
I'd definitely do this again, the Honda Collection Hall was a bonus, the icing on the cake you might say. The Japanese people are very friendly and welcoming and will try and help you out as best they can. The language barrier was a bit difficult however google translate on our phones was fantastic, we used it quite a lot. Only thing I'd do different next time is spend a bit more time in Japan to see some more sights, do a few touristy things and maybe hire a bike and do some riding.
Using Gordon at Pole Positions Travels was an excellent choice for us as all the hard bits were organised for us. You could book your own accomodation and tickets etc, but the hardest bit will be organising travel to and from the track. I believe they have busses that travel there but you have to book well in advance. If you miss out on getting a bus, the track is over an hour away. Pole Position made it easy and convenient for us and we got to meet a bunch of different and interesting people and share experiences with them. All up and excellent trip to MotoGP.
Some more images of the riders are on my Facebook page. Click the link.
