Last week, racing cars drove around the once-iconic superspeedway oval at Mobility Resort Motegi for the final time.
To close out the Golden Week holiday, two of Honda’s legendary SUPER GT GT500 championship-winning cars were brought out of the nearby Honda Collection Hall for a “Sound Demonstration” run at the historic 2.4 kilometre oval track, which last held a major race over 16 years ago.
Legendary Honda factory driver Ryo Michigami was reunited with his championship-winning 2000 Castrol Mugen Honda NSX-GT, joined on track by the 2010 title-winning Weider Modulo/Dome Honda HSV-010 GT, driven by Honda heritage test driver Hikaru Miyagi.
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Last Tuesday’s run would be the last event held around the oval, which suffered major damage to the surface following the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011.
Earlier this week, images were captured of the protective catch fences being torn down, the first step in transforming portions of the Motegi oval course into new spectator areas for major events like the MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix in October.
茂木のオーバルコース解体が始まったのね pic.twitter.com/4r6FVsmtRq
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At one end of the asymmetric oval, a new luxury viewing deck will be installed, overlooking the 4.8km road course’s final turn, known as Victory Corner. At the other end will be an open camping site. Both ends of the decommissioned oval will be covered with grass.
Originally known as Twin Ring Motegi when it opened in 1997, Honda’s new state-of-the-art racing facility featured the first paved superspeedway oval ever constructed in Japan. This vision was realised three decades after the original plans for Fuji Speedway, to be built as a clone of Daytona, fell through (for many more reasons than just the commonly-quoted lack of funding).
Motegi’s oval was primarily constructed for the Indy Japan 500k, which was first held in 1998 as part of the CART Championship Series. The event would jump from one side of the American open-wheel “split” to the other in 2003, the same year in which Honda withdrew from CART and joined the rival Indy Racing League (now IndyCar Series). NASCAR also held a Cup Series exhibition race at the oval in 1998.
But neither of these events had the honour of being the first major events held at the Motegi oval. In November 1997, the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship – now known as the SUPER GT Series – held its annual All-Star Race at the circuit. Though, bollards were placed in the 10º banked speedway turns to form makeshift chicanes.
After a 1997 season dominated by Toyota, NISMO’s Aguri Suzuki and Érik Comas won both heat races in their Zexel Nissan Skyline GT-R, while Ferrari Club of Japan’s Tetsuya Ota and Anders Olofsson swept GT300 in their F355. The All-Star Race at Motegi also featured the only JGTC appearance for CART journeyman Hiro Matsushita, a cameo from recently-retired F1 driver Ukyo Katayama, and what sadly turned out to be the only GT500 drive for second-generation rookie Shingo Tachi.
A decade later, the Super Taikyu Series would run a post-season exhibition race of its own around the oval, from 2008 until 2010. The 2010 race would be the last held at the Motegi oval before the earthquake.
With IndyCar set to leave Motegi anyway after the 2011 Indy Japan event, there was no real incentive for Honda Mobilityland to invest the money needed to repair the oval track for racing – for most of the last 15 years, the oval has served as a makeshift parking lot for major events at the road course.
Though one-off demo runs did take place at the Motegi oval from time to time: During the 2017 Honda Racing Thanks Day event, Takuma Sato drove his Indianapolis 500-winning car around the oval in front of his home fans.
Images © GTA
