Twin Ring Motegi

Twin Ring Motegi (ツインリンクもてぎ, Tsuin Rinku Motegi) is a motorsport race track located at Motegi, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. Its name comes from the facility having two race tracks: a 2.493-kilometer (1.549 mi) oval and a 4.8-kilometer (2.98 mi) road course. It was built in 1997 by Honda, as part of the company's effort to bring the IndyCar Series to Japan, helping to increase their knowledge of American open-wheel racing.

Twin Ring Motegi

Location120-1 Hiyama, Motegi
Haga, Tochigi, 321-3597 Japan
Capacity68,156
OwnerHonda
OperatorMobilityland Corporation, Ltd.
OpenedAugust 1997
Construction cost¥5 billion (44,873,000.00 United States Dollars)
Major eventsMotoGP
Super GT
Super Formula
MFJ Superbike
Super Taikyu
IndyCar Series (former)
World Touring Car Championship (former)
Super speedway
Length2.493 km (1.549 mi)
Turns4
BankingTurns = 10°
Race lap record0:25.463 ( Gil de Ferran, Walker Racing, 1999, Champ Car)
Road course
Length4.800 km (2.983 mi)
Turns14
Race lap record1:31.888 ( Tomoki Nojiri, Dandelion Racing, 2017, Super Formula)
East road course
Length3.400 km (2.112 mi)
Turns11
West road course
Length1.400 km (0.869 mi)
Turns6

Super speedway

The oval course is the only one of its kind in Japan used for competitive racing. It is a low-banked, 1.549-mile-long (2.493 km) egg-shaped course, with turns three and four being much tighter than turns one and two. On March 28, 1998, CART held the inaugural Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Motegi Speedway. The race was won by Mexican driver Adrián Fernández. CART continued racing at Twin Ring Motegi Speedway from 1998–2002. In 2003, Honda entered the Indy Racing League and the race became a part of the IRL schedule. In addition to Indy car racing, the track has also hosted a single NASCAR exhibition race in 1998.

Honda, which had built the oval for the express purpose of developing its oval-racing program for Indy car racing, did not win a race at the track for its first six years of operation. In 2004, Dan Wheldon took the first win for Honda on the oval. In 2008, the Motegi oval gained additional publicity when Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an Indycar race, beating Hélio Castroneves for her first and only Indycar victory.[1]

The 2011 season was the last season of Indycar in Motegi. It had been dropped from the calendar as organizers looked to maximize viewing audiences.[2] The road course, rather than the super speedway, was used for the 2011 race due to damage to the oval track resulting from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. The oval is not presently used for racing and even has been used as additional parking space during MotoGP events, but is still used for Honda's annual Thanks Day event showcasing various Honda road and racing vehicles, mainly from the nearby Honda Collection Hall, with Takuma Sato running a lap of the course in his 2017 Indianapolis 500 winning car seven years since the last IndyCar race in the oval.[3][4]

Track length of paved oval

The track length is disputed by series that run at Twin Ring Motegi. The NASCAR timing and scoring use a length of 1.549 miles (2.493 km).[5] This length was used by CART in their races between 1998 and 2002, too.[6] The IRL measured in 2003 a length of 1.52 miles (2.45 km).[7] This length was also used in the following races till 2010.[8]

NASCAR history
Main article: Coca-Cola 500 (Motegi)

Mike Skinner won the only NASCAR Cup Series exhibition race held at the track in 1998, the Coca-Cola 500. Skinner won driving the No.31 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. The race was most noted for being the first oval track NASCAR race in Japan as well as being the first in which Dale Earnhardt and his son, Dale Earnhardt Jr., competed with one another, driving No.3 and No.1 Coca-Cola Chevrolets, respectively. The track also held the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West in 1999 with Kevin Richards getting the win.

Road course

The road course is 4.8 kilometers long and is unique in sharing garage and grandstand facilities with the oval course, but being entirely separate otherwise. Although they are separate tracks, it is impossible for races to occur simultaneously on the two courses; to access the oval track, teams must cross the road course pit and front straight. The road course also runs in the opposite direction from the oval; clockwise, rather than counter-clockwise.

The course itself is built in a stop-start straight-hairpin style, which flows differently than many similarly-sized tracks. By Japanese standards the circuit is exceptionally flat, with only a slight elevation rise towards the hairpin turn. The road course is much busier than the oval track, with Formula Nippon visiting twice, Super GT and Super Taikyu cars once each, and local events almost every weekend. The road course can be used in three ways: the full course, or two "short courses" can be made, using connecting roadways. These short courses are usually used for junior formula events, such as Formula 4 and FJ1600.

The road course is also a popular motorcycle racing track, with the MotoGP usually visiting once a year, as well as several Japanese national bike racing series. It has hosted the Pacific motorcycle Grand Prix from 2000 to 2003 and the Japanese motorcycle Grand Prix since 2004.

Other facilities

In addition to the main racing complex, Twin Ring Motegi features a second road course (called the "North Short Course") for karting and Formula 4 events, as well as a 1/4 mile dirt track for modified and sprint car racing. In addition, the FIM Trials series visits the track every year for the world trials championship. Therefore, an outdoor trials course exists on the facility.

Outside of racing, Twin Ring has the Honda Collection Hall, which features historic Honda racing and production cars and motorcycles, and Honda Fan Fun Lab, which features Honda's next generation technologies such as robotics, fuel-cell vehicles and aviation. Honda also operates a technology demonstration center on the site, as well as educational centers.

In 2009, a cafe opened which was named after the Gran Turismo video games.[9][10]

Track difficulties

Twin Ring is a separate-but-combined road-and-oval track (as opposed to the "roval" tracks common in the United States), and the decision to include a full road course contained largely within the oval necessitated design compromises. For spectators, sightlines can be extremely poor for road course races, as the grandstands are much further back than usual. The oval course blocks the view of much of the road course, including the best passing point on the track , and several large-screen televisions are needed. Seating outside the grandstand is limited to areas of the infield and along the 750-metre backstraight of the road course.

Track access is a major concern, with only two entry and exit points by a two-lane public road. Motegi is not a particularly large town, and accommodation is virtually non-existent close to the track, except for the on-site hotel. Train links to the area are extremely limited (the major regional lines, JR East and Tobu Railway do not service the area), nor has a planned superhighway been completed. Thus the stated track capacity (about 65,000) is dictated largely by traffic flow, not by actual seating capacity (estimated to be nearly 100,000 for road-course events, 80,000 for the oval).

In 2011 Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo proposed to boycott the MotoGP race out of fears for their health from radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant even though all the independent scientific experts including the World Health Organization and Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency had stated that it is safe to live permanently 80 km or more from the plant.[11] Motegi is more than 120 km from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In the end, all the teams showed up for the race.

As a large recently constructed Japanese circuit, Twin Ring Motegi has and continues to be utilised virtually in a large number of electronic video games, both in arcade machines and in PC and console games for home use.

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See also

References
  3. "2015 Honda Racing Thanks Day: Takuma & Alonso drove the all-new NSX, production version demo run also conducted". Response.jp. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  4. Tate, Adam. "Sato Stars at Honda 'Thanks' Day 2017". Motorsports Tribune. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  5. 1998 NASCAR Thunder Special Motegi at racing-reference.info
  6. 1998 race result on champcarstats.com
  7. 2003 race result on champcarstats.com
  8. 2010 race result on champcarstats.com
  9. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-11-13. Retrieved 2012-05-09.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. http://www.vg247.com/2009/04/03/gran-turismo-cafe-opens-in-japan/

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