Motegi IRL Race

Since there was an IRL race at Motegi, I took the business trip members with me. I wanted to take the kids, but I thought it might be too hard. I think I did the right thing by not taking them since it was hot and we had to do a lot of walking.


They ran out of parking passes at Motegi so we had to go down into town and park and then take a bus back to the track. We had to do that in reverse coming home so it was a long day. We left at around 9:00, just barely got seated and the race started and got home around 7:00 at night.






Picture of the Honda Fury. Being in Japan, you see a lot of motorcycles and scooters. I can ride a 50 cc scooter without any additional licenses, but for anything bigger, I have to take a motorcycle test which I hear is very hard. I think it will take away from me riding my bicycle so I probably won"t get a scooter. I am thinking of getting one of these when I get back to the states.






Turn 1 at Motegi. The cheap seats that we bought were in between turn 1 and 2. We were 4 rows from the track with no one in front of us. It was great.








6000 yen ($70) ticket, 500 yen beers ($6) all day, falling asleep at the race and waking up with about 20 laps to go... priceless.






Picture of the pit area and front straightaway before the race.







Danica Patrick in her GoDaddy car.







The truck on the track was right where all of the wrecks happened. There was a bump in the track that sent sparks flying when the cars hit is. Three of them lost control and crashed in this spot. Our seats were 2 sections over from the crash point. We would see the cars going out of control as they came toward us and then you would feel them hit the wall. Unbelievable.





Picture of the pit area after the race. Helio Castroneves ended up winning the race. He led most of the day.







Pictures of girls handing out autographed pictures of the Japanese drivers. Of course, I had to get a set... Sorry Elin, it had to go on the blog. Delete it if you must.









Jeff Robison ended up in one of the center aisle flip down seats. I could not help but snap a picture of him.




One of the vendors had metal signs of old advertisements. I saw this one as I was flipping through. I thought it was funny so I took a picture.









Introducing the Japanese drivers after the race.





Turn 1.






View in front of us when the cars came by.





About 29 seconds to go 1.5 miles.





Turn 1




Ladies and gentlemen... start your engines.




Traditional Japanese music played by a live band.




Jet flyby.