Nismo Festival

80 years of badass Nissan racers were on display at Fuji Raceway.

Tim Bergmeister survives nasty crash at Fuji

A testament to the strength of Porsche race cars, Tim Bergmeister survived this awful and bizarre crash during the second round of the 2012 Super GT at Fuji.

Tim is brother of Jörg Bergmeister who was in attendance at Fuji and added this update via Facebook

"Tims condition has stabelized. He has severe lung injuries and the doctors are trying to safe his left lung while the right side is in much better shape. within the next 2 weeks we will know how it goes. His brokes bones are no issue right now and the good thing is there are no head injuries nor damage to the spinal cord. Please keep your fingers crossed for him. Thank you for all the messages. I will keep you updated. Jörg"

Best wishes from Axis.

Lap Fuji onboard a Ferrari 458 Challenge

Many of you will be quite familiar with the Fuji track from playing Gran Turismo 5. Here's the real thing, riding in our friend HFO's Ferrari 458 Challenge on a very chilly late december day.

Theat's about 180 mph on the long straight but, as you might expect, cold weather and slick tires tend to not mix all that well and HFO did have a pretty close call ending up only inches from the guard rail on an out lap!
Check it out after the jump

Hellaflush @ Fuji

We're suckers for a well produced promo, too bad it's a touch far for us to attend! :

Hellaflush Japan – October 1, 2011

This is the official announcement of our first event in Japan which will be held at Fuji Speedway (FSW, for short). Hellaflush X. We are very excited about this event and with the help from our friends at AF Imp, G-Fine / Grace, AME Wheels, Rays Engineering, Alpinestars, Air Runner / ACC, Rotiform, Super Street, RAYS Engineering and Speedhunters.

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本日を持ちまして、ショーカーの登録を終了させて頂きます。エントリーして頂いた皆様、本当にありがとうございました。スタッフ一同、皆様のご登録に感謝するとともに、10月１日に富士スピードウェイでお会いできることを楽しみにしております。

FatlaceTV

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Japan, Onboard

Fuji, Montegi, Sendai and Suzuka courtesy of Smartycam. The others are after the jump.

Fukushima Drift

While I'm sure disaster pictures bring lots of precious page views, as car guys we prefer to send our wishes remembering that, among many other things, our Japanese friends are leaders in car culture, innovation and passion.

Hang in there, Tracktards!

Remi Schouten of Okydokyo.com shot these two great clips last year, one is from a Drift matsuri in Fukushima, the second from the 2010 Nismo festival at Fuji Speedway. Enjoy them.



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Foot in Mouth Disease: Japanese GP Executive Summary

Maybe Hamilton should stop declaring he's as good as Senna or that he will visit Senna's grave or that he has anything to do with Senna.  In fact, he should probably change the color of his helmet because every time Hamilton invokes him, the spirit of Ayrton seems to come down and deliver the cosmic bitchslap.

And maybe Kubica is the most deserving of winning the championship this year. Hamilton: he has the best car, he's a top tier talent, he's incredibly stupid. His move at the start was just that, stupid.  That he even though he needed to make the move was stupid.

Curiously, nobody said much about how it is that he ended up behind Massa at the end of lap one. Lewirton Sennalton flew off the road a second time in one lap and only the miracle of paved runoff saved him.

Massa, he's fast, he's unlucky but a Schumacher would have realized Hamilton had flatspotted his tires to the chords and figured out a plan B. A fully avoidable and forseable penalty and like Hamilton at Spa, he claimed to have been pushed off the track.   Still,  everyone cheered!

As for the penalties, I would have given none, none for the start, none for the Hamilton-Massa incident and none for the Bourdais-Massa punt.  One giant upshot would have been not to have to hear the moaning from Hamilton and the UK Motor Media for the next 200 years about it.

Again awesome Alonso. Renault gave him a car that was truly competitive with Mclaren and Ferrari....

Great battle between Kubica and Raikkonen but once again I say: F1 tires suck.  To hear both drivers talk about their struggles with graining and how they each had only a two lap window of optimal tire performance and could do little once the tires went off was just sad. I hope slicks will prove more consistent next year.

Japanese GP Friday Practice 2 Live

Free Practice is over, join us for Qualifying at 1 AM tonight.






And here is the rest of it.

Ferrari nose and Toyota tail

Some Fuji specific aero changes to the Ferrari front end which adds a pair of sharply angled fins behind the wing mounting points. Toyota instead will show a new extractor with larger channels to alter the balance of the car.
from Gazzetta dello Sport





And here is the rest of it.

Remember Traction Control?

Weather forecasts for this week end's Japanese GP do not call for rain, a minor miracle if correct. Remember last year's Kubica vs Massa last lap duel in the middle of a monsoon? It's tempting to ascribe that solely to electronics but Alonso was caught out as indeed were many others that day.

Still, no question it was a huge performance advantage and one nobody really misses....OK, maybe Massa at Silverstone after his fourth spin.

Let's go back to Professor Piola for a short history lesson and then, after the jump, you will find the classic Kubica-Massa battle from 2007...








Rain Heroes from Axis of Oversteer on Vimeo.

Raw Fuji

Quickly before I head up to Watkins Glen, here is a raw Tele5 feed from Fuji. The journalist in his stand up at the beginning mentions that the UK media had a plan to try and trip up Alonso by asking all kinds of embarrassing questions at the Thursday conference. I have not had time to look at any news reports so I don't know how that little media war went down but Fernando looks fairly relaxed in front of the home media. The order of the day is "I'm concentrated on winning the 2007 champonship, 2008 can wait"

David Coulthard has some funny remarks and there is a truly surreal Panasonic/Bridgestone promo event thing happening at the end....Cameramen were not really thinking tires there.

Practice-Quali and race are on at some ungodly hour here in the east coast so fire up the tivos!

Fuji and the another year of chaos

I posted this clip before but I wanted to re-propose it in light if this year's legal hoopla.

1976 is regarded by many as the year when global media really took notice of Formula 1, ironically because of the incredible political controversy surrounding that championship and, you guessed it, Mclaren and Ferrari. There was everything thrown in, disqualifications, reversals, near death and further disqualifications and even Hunt's wife leaving him for Richard Burton... the media loved it and nothing has quite been the same since. All I can say is that this year, when many worried that Schumacher's retirement would hurt ratings, Bernie Ecclestone's words to Peter Windsor recently on the grid sound familiar "It's all good for business".

The 1976 season was decided on the Fuji circuit in Japan under appalling weather and safety conditions (now we have paved runoff, back then they seemed to favor grass bordered by guard rails!).

The first clip is a wrap up of the season leading to the final race, the second, the first two laps to get a look at the circuit, and finally a priceless snippet of the post race interview with Hunt. Enjoy the rare look and that amazing tie-shirt combo on the host and don't miss Hunt getting his head drilled at the beginning of the second clip...ah those high tech days!


Caution volume very loud on these clips!

Big Balls and mutton chops

The discussion I had with badbadM about Kimi Raikkonen and McLaren's choice to take the risk for the win in the 2005 European GP got me thinking about some of the more colorful and basically did it for fun and passion.

Before the start of this Formula 1 season, Kimi sneaked off to Finland and without telling Ferrari's management who would have most certainly have had a cow if they had found out, entered a snowmobile race. He signed up with a pseudonym: James Hunt.








Now Hunt was the ultimate slacker genius of F1: girls, cars, booze and cigarettes, it's safe to say he would not have fit well in a corporate environment. In fact he had a clause in his Mclaren contract that he would not ever have to wear a suit or got to sponsor events.





I don't need to go into the James Hunt story which you can find elsewhere online but I did find this fantastic period clip starring Dickie Davies an announcer who looks like a cross between a Michael Palin character and a porn actor and must surely have been the inspiration for Brian Fontana. The graphics alone are hilarious.
It's a wind up to the 1976 season final at Fuji Japan a race that would be held under such torrential rain that Niki Lauda decided to quit after two laps even though the championship was on the line. I guess he gambled that Hunt "the Shunt" would throw it all away and that he would win by playing it safe. Of course you can't fault Lauda for bravery, not after missing only two races after his horrific accident at the Nürburgring, an accident shown in graphic detail in this clip.

the volume is kind of loud on this clip, you might want to turn the speakers down before you hit play...




I saw these cars in person at the last Monaco Grand Prix Historique. A fantastic event and a great chance to see all these amazing cars driven, in most cases, just as hard as back when they were new.




thanks to stavelot7