Diary from Japan by Justin Ford and James Greenwood

Tuesday

Juzzy
We caught the Shikensen (high speed) train to Kakekawa to the Yamaha factory and got to see motorcycles and snow mobiles being made, we also got to see the Yamaha museum lots of motorbikes, an F1 car and even a go-kart from 1975!

Wada-san our tour guide from Yamaha then took us for lunch at a restaurant that had the food on a sushi train /conveyor belt, we had to pick it off as it went past….weird, Dad even tried raw fish!

Wednesday

Juzzy
This morning Dad, Jordie, James, Gary and I caught a tour bus around Tokyo to have a look at a couple of landmarks. We first saw the Tokyo tower. We then left to go and see the Imperial palace where the Emperor and Empress live. That was definitely a sight to see. Our last stop was to the Buddha’s temple where we had a couple of minutes to look around the temple and surrounding markets. The bus dropped us off at Tokyo station to catch a train back to our hotel to collect our bags in Shinagawa. After collecting our bags we strolled across the road to the Shinagawa station to finally catch the bullet train to our hotel in Sendai where we will stay for this weekend’s event just a couple kilometers up the highway.

Thursday

Juzzy
We got to the track at 7.30 to find a brand new kart waiting for us. Dad and Jordy got stuck into it adjusting and checking every thing popping tyres and working out a starting setup. For the first session I was busy learning the track and scrubbing in new tyres as well as nutting out what needed adjusting for the next practice session got with in 0.7 seconds of the fastest guys

For the second practice session we made a heap of changes and combined with some track familiarity I got down to within 0.3 seconds of the pace setters. Third and final session of the day we tried some carby settings and tyre settings and went faster but so did the pacesetters, they were abut 0.4 seconds faster still a bit of work to do……..for the mechanics lol

The Sugo Sportsland track is in a man made crater surrounded by the main sugo circuit with Nissan GTRs racing past/around us…its mad! The track its self it cross between Geelong and Todd Road but without any hill we are in a pit box with a window looking out on to pit lane the pit paddock is all tarmac – it’s awesome.

James
I had a fairly productive day for my first day on track, we shaved off a fair bit of time. We have the go-kart running fairly well, but are struggling for straight-line speed. It probably doesn’t help that I am 8kgs overweight though!!! Hopefully, we get the tune right in tomorrow’s practice and be right up front for qualifying on Saturday. We have already started trying to figure out ways to lighten my kart, but it’s pretty difficult to find 8kg of a kart!