Forget Spa, Suzuka is F1's best circuit

Legend and legacy are only worth so much. And while Spa-Francorchamps remains one of the great tracks on the grand prix calendar, anyone arguing that Suzuka has not long since superseded it as the greatest driver challenge in Formula 1 is living in the past.

Grand prix circuits are defined by two things. Based on one of them, the ribbon of asphalt itself, Spa probably has the edge. But the real character of a track is defined by what lies beyond it. And, once you take that into account, Suzuka wins hands down.

At Spa, for very sound safety reasons, much of the circuit is lined by asphalt runoff. Thankfully, given some of the horrendous accidents at the Belgian track in the past, mistakes are not punished as harshly as they once were. But it also means that drivers can get away scot-free with most errors.

At Suzuka, while there is some asphalt runoff in key areas, much of the track is lined with gravel traps, grass and barriers, all ready to snare the unwary. As several drivers discovered last weekend, one tiny mistake there can have serious consequences. And they love the challenge.

Mark Webber, fresh from his first pole position in a year, put it best last weekend. Remember, the Australian has been bitten hard by Suzuka in the past, crashing at Degner 1 during Saturday morning practice in 2010 and condemning himself to the back of the grid. Yet still he loves the track.

Webber on his way to pole position at Suzuka © LAT

"It's the links course of the golf world, or the big-wave stuff for the surfers," said Webber. "It's a really testing circuit. Unless anyone sees a Formula 1 car here live to see what happens in sector one, it's very hard for them to understand how quickly we go through there."

That sector-one 'snake' is without doubt one of the best places to watch cars and drivers in modern F1. The run from Turn 3 through to the exit of Turn 7 is a testing left/right/left/right/left combination. Perhaps only Austin's run from Turn 4 to Turn 9 can rival it, albeit with the caveat that this American sequence offers more margin for error thanks to the run-off.

The 'snake' is a section of track that tells you more about a driver than any other. It's all about poise, precise weight transfer and accuracy, and requires a driver to feel exactly how much grip he has to avoid the tiny mistakes that can cost so much time. As McLaren sporting director Sam Michael puts it: "Being able to deliver a strong sector time in the Esses is one of the best indicators of a driver's ability."

It was through this section in 2000 that Jenson Button astonished F1. His third place on the grid in a decent - but far from great - Williams-BMW was remarkable, but what really stood out was his pace through this section in qualifying. Nobody was faster. It's no surprise that Button, at his best a silky-smooth and precise driver par excellence, should thrive in such a sequence.

While the experienced F1 drivers would never be so complacent as to declare they have mastered Suzuka, familiarity does breed contempt. But speaking to the rookie drivers, only two of which (Valtteri Bottas and Giedo van der Garde) had ever turned a wheel at Suzuka thanks to their Friday practice outings last year, offers a fascinating and fresh perspective.

Marussia driver Max Chilton, who starred in qualifying and acquitted himself very well on his Suzuka debut, found that little could prepare him for the challenge of the snake.

"We have the simulators, but when you get here you're shocked by how different it is," says Chilton. "In the sim, it's easy to get the first sector flowing, but in reality you have to use all the road, all the white line. If you lose half a tenth in the first, that becomes three and a half by the end of the esses.

Chilton was left impressed by Suzuka © LAT

"It's an old-school circuit, fast and flowing. At most circuits, when you have a fast corner, there's room to use either side of the track, but not here. It's grass and asphalt."

While the snake is a part of the track where few drivers go off, what follows is a minefield. The two Degner right-handers offer perilously little margin for error. As Marussia's Jules Bianchi discovered when he shunted there on Friday morning, tearing a side-impact tube off his chassis and costing him the rest of the day's running while a new car was built up, things can go badly wrong here.

"I had an oversteer and tried to correct the car, but my elbow was stuck between the chassis and the seat so I couldn't turn anymore," said Bianchi. "On a normal circuit, with the runoff, it would have been fine.

"Suzuka is a bit more difficult because it's a real track and that is what you want. You don't have much margin and if you make a small mistake, you go off. That's how it should be."

It was a similar story for van der Garde. While his Caterham stopped short of the barrier, he showed why the Degners are so tough, with his off at the second one a consequence of a mistake at the first.

"It's a really tough track I have to say," he said. "It takes some time to learn how far you can push. It's like Monaco but without walls - only much faster. We saw on Friday how many cars went off.

"I went a bit too deep [at Degner 1] and our car runs quite low, so once you're on the kerb, it's 'see you later'. Luckily I didn't hit the barrier.

"But I quite like it [the fact that there's little margin for error]. It's a cool place to drive, especially sector one. It's definitely very hard for rookies. To come back here was really tough and the more laps you do, the better it gets. This has been the toughest learning of a track for me that I have ever experienced in my life.

"The lack of runoff is what makes it really challenging and cool. It's like the old days - if you have a little off you hit the barrier. The new tracks are nice, but you have a lot of runoff and if you brake too late, you just go off and come back."

Not all of the rookies hit trouble during this year's Japanese GP weekend. On the contrary, Esteban Gutierrez scored his first F1 points thanks to an excellent run to seventh. But he came close to disaster on occasion, showing just how fine the margins are.

"A few times I was close to hitting the wall," he admitted, "at Turn 8 [Degner 1] on Friday and then out of Turn 14 [Spoon] on Saturday while trying to find the limits. It's a very technical track.

"Sector one is very fast and all about the sequence. Once you lose the line in one corner it compromises the next, and to find the compromise between one corner and another is something that takes time to find out.

Gutierrez admitted Suzuka was a great challenge © LAT

"When you drive on the edge and know there is no margin, there's more excitement, especially on a track like this where you're going through very fast corners with the car on the limit. I enjoy this feeling a lot, and that's why the track gives great feelings to a lot of the drivers. It's very special."

Spoon Curve, where Gutierrez almost hit trouble on Friday, is another testing corner. The combination of its length - officially it's two corners - and tightening radius makes it a difficult turn to get right. Adrian Sutil found out just how difficult it can be when he lost the rear of his Force India on Saturday morning and backed into the barrier on the inside.

This was another example of how Suzuka can bite even experienced drivers, for not only did he lose track time, but the impact damaged his gearbox, triggering a five-place grid penalty.

From some perspectives, Spoon should be a zero-risk corner, for it has vast swathes of runoff. But as Sergio Perez - who damaged his McLaren's chassis in a crash after dropping a wheel onto the artificial grass on the outside of the track at entry - and Sutil discovered, if you go off you're in serious trouble.

Spoon is doubly important given the length of the straight that follows. This leads to 130R, a once-great corner that, like Eau Rouge at Spa, is no longer the challenge it once was thanks to the grip levels of the current cars. But while some lament such changes, this evolution has simply ensured that other, previously more straightforward, corners have become ever-more challenging.

Perhaps the final rookie, Valtteri Bottas, sums it up best. He believes Suzuka is as challenging a track as you will encounter outside of street circuits.

"It's a different kind of feeling when you know that if you brake too late, push too hard and overshoot, you can just try again the next lap," he says. "I prefer the old-school tracks."

Few will take issue with what Bottas says, particularly after old-school Suzuka produced such a fascinating grand prix weekend.

Ultimately, this is not an argument to go back in time. Reducing safety standards to improve the challenge and the spectacle is a morally dubious position, and tracks must always strive for ever-improved driver protection. Even so, for the next generation of tracks, perhaps there are ways to strike a compromise whereby mistakes are punished, at the very least in terms of significant time loss, rather than striking a wall.

Whatever the rights and wrongs, all of this is what makes Suzuka what it is today: the best circuit in grand prix racing.

Sorry Spa... but there's no shame in being number two.