Suzuka International Racing Course, Racing Circuit

Suzuka International Racing Course sits among former paddy fields in Ino, just outside Suzuka City in Mie Prefecture, Japan, and is owned and operated by Honda. Conceived by company founder Soichiro Honda as a test bed and showcase for his cars and motorcycles, the venue was designed by Dutch engineer John Hugenholtz and opened in September 1962. Its defining feature is an unusual figure-of-eight layout, where the back section crosses over the rest of the lap via a bridge, a configuration almost unique among major circuits. The track packs an enormous variety of corners into a compact site, opening with the flowing uphill Esses before reaching the Dunlop Curve, the squared-off Degner Curve, a tight hairpin, the long Spoon Curve and the high-speed 130R, with a chicane added near the start-finish straight to slow cars before the final corner. Successive safety programmes from the 1980s onward eased and re-profiled many corners, including a major reshaping of 130R after Allan McNish's 2002 crash, yet the circuit retains an old-school character that drivers rate highly. Suzuka joined the Formula One calendar in 1987 and has hosted the Japanese Grand Prix for most years since, often as a championship decider that produced famous Senna-Prost clashes. Beyond F1 it stages the Suzuka 8 Hours motorcycle endurance race, a cornerstone of the FIM Endurance World Championship, plus the Suzuka 10 Hours for GT cars and rounds of Super GT and Super Formula. The entire racing surface was relaid across the 2025 and 2026 winter breaks in a two-phase programme, with lap times notably quicker afterwards thanks to the higher grip of the fresh asphalt. The circuit holds FIA Grade 1 and FIM Grade C licences.

Operated by: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.