McLaren F1 stars' final Honda hurrah

The trees haven't yet shed their coat of richly auburn autumn leaves; only the chill, when you step out of the low sun's glare, reminds you that winter holds this hemisphere in its grip. Motegi may not be the most remote race circuit in the world - that honour probably rests elsewhere in Japan, atop the extinct volcano wherein nests Autopolis - but it's admirably bucolic, being a 100-mile schlep from the heart of Tokyo and buried within dense woodland. Next to this, even majestic Spa-Francorchamps seems positively suburban.

For gaijin such as we, reaching Motegi is an adventure in itself: the bullet train from Tokyo kicks off at the nearest city, Utsunomiya, a 90-minute bus ride away (when they're running, and if you can get on the right one). Car it is, then, and F1 Racing's wheels for the weekend - a cuboid Mazda 'Flair Wagon' hustled along by an enthusiastic 660cc triple - couldn't be more Japanese. Arriving well after dark, we're only aware of the terrain's gradual incline over the last 20 miles thanks to the screech-signalling of that industrious engine and its rubber-band CVT gearbox. The vista next morning of this unusual two-circuits-in-one is truly extraordinary.

Jenson Button has been starring at Honda's annual Thanks Day for more than a decade and he's still one of the biggest draws in a show that this year also boasts McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne, Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly (here on account of racing for Honda in Super Formula, Japan's biggest domestic single-seater series), Honda-powered Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato and MotoGP riders Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, along with a host of Honda-affiliated domestic riders and drivers.

Judge Jenson's popularity not just on the substantial crowd who've descended on the circuit from far and wide, but also by the eye-gouging array of coloured blocks on a fiendishly complicated spreadsheet that accounts for every celeb's where-and-when. Each minute of Button's next eight hours is spoken for, a frantic rush of fan engagements, demo laps in an immaculately preserved 1991 McLaren-Honda MP4/6, and a handful of races in Super GT machinery, karts, and - ahem - a Honda Jazz; whenever we speak to him, he's rushing from one end of the pitlane to the other, chasing his next appointment.

So you thought Button was edging into a comfy retirement? Wrong on all counts. Amid the hustle of the day - shortly after running out of fuel before the end of the Honda Jazz 'economy race' - he casually drops the news that he's going to be racing full-time in 2018 in Super GT, Japan's most popular tin-top racing series. If that sells it a little short, chew on this: the Honda NSX he'll be racing is blisteringly quicker than most non-prototype sportscars.

"You just wouldn't believe the power of this thing" Jenson Button on the McLaren-Honda MP4/6

"I'm very excited," he says. "It all started here [Motegi], actually, at the end of 2006. I spoke to Yamamoto-san from Honda and said I'd love to have a go in a Super GT car at the Thanks Day. I didn't actually drive on the day, but they gave me half a day's testing and it was a great experience.

"That led me to saying that I'd like to do the Suzuka 1000km, which I did, and I really enjoyed it, so here we are. Towards the end of 2017 Yamamoto-san asked me if I'd like to do a full year of racing, and I said I'd love to do that.

"On most circuits the NSX Super GT car is 8-10 seconds faster than a GT3. These are super-quick cars with lots of downforce. The straightline speed compared with an F1 car is obviously miles off, but in high-speed corners it's really good. At Suzuka, the Esses are very special."

Inside one of the garages, partially screened off from prying eyes and cameras, is the brand new NSX-GT Button will be racing this year.

What a beast! Honed in the 60% windtunnel Honda built during its time as an F1 works team, the basic outline of the already racy road car is garlanded with dive planes, splitters, skirts and an enormous rear wing. Button looks on with some bemusement as F1 Racing attaches a GoPro camera to the inside of the windscreen with a suction clamp, having first assured the team's chief engineer - via the medium of mime - that the clamps are sturdy enough for a human being to use them to climb an invisible glass wall.

As Button clambers in, wriggles back in his seat, flexes his gloved fingers on the wheel and surveys his new working environment, all under the watchful gaze of our camera, there's a flurry of excitement without as another racing engine - some way distant - clears its throat. It's Sato, Jenson's Honda F1 team-mate many moons ago, about to embark on a historic lap.

Motegi was built almost 20 years ago as a mixed-use destination - out in the country park there's a camp site and a zipwire, along with driver-education facilities on the campus as well as a museum chronicling Honda's fascinating vehicular history. The track itself has a 1.5-mile unequal-radius oval, built with the aim of luring NASCAR and IndyCar to Japan, and a three-mile road course weaving into, around and out of the centre of the oval via a pair of tunnels. Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an IndyCar race here in 2008; and Dale Earnhardt and his son competed against one another for the first time in a non-points NASCAR Cup race here in 1998, the only occasion on which Japan has hosted America's top-echelon stock car championship.

But the catastrophic effects of the Tohoku undersea earthquake in March 2011 - which precipitated the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and accounted for nearly 16,000 fatalities - also reached here, 160 miles away from the epicentre. Measuring nine on the Richter scale, the tremor shifted the entire island of Honshu just over two metres to the east and tilted the earth on its axis; Motegi's oval circuit was among the smaller elements of collateral damage in the disaster, but it has been out of use ever since.

"These are super-quick cars with lots of downforce. The straightline speed compared with an F1 car is obviously miles off, but in high-speed corners it's really good" Jenson Button on the Super GT Honda

Until now. While the track has been considered beyond economic repair since 2011, Sato's '17 Indy 500 win generated enough excitement and publicity to warrant patching the damaged surface enough for Taku to essay some demonstration laps in his winning car. The celebrated Borg-Warner trophy is also here, having left the US for the first time ever. A reverential silence falls over the 80,000 crowd as they savour the moment: Sato revs the engine, hooks a gear, and guides the sleek blue-and-white Andretti Autosport IndyCar out of the pitlane and up onto the banking.

"There's still a bit of a bump where the track has been fixed," he told F1 Racing earlier. "So we've had to raise the ride height of the car a bit. But I'm so excited to be doing this."

So too are the crowd, many of whom leap to their feet as Sato essays his victory laps, brings the car in, then completes the display with an enthusiastic series of tyre-smoking doughnuts. Despite a third season of rancid F1 headlines for Honda, Sato's landmark achievement, plus another MotoGP title for the unstoppable Marquez, ensures the Thanks Day remains on an upbeat note. But that's not to say that F1 has been elided from today's order of play, just that the occasion lingers on much more cherished temps perdu. In the paddock, surrounded by selfie-stick-bearing enthusiasts, a replica (the original is in the Honda Collection Hall) of the dainty 1.5-litre V12-engined RA272 in which Richie Ginther won the 1965 Mexican GP sits under an awning next to a road car in Toro Rosso's F1 livery - a marker of hope for 2018.

And, in a garage further down the pitlane, two examples of living F1 history, beautifully maintained in working order by the Collection Hall team: a McLaren-Honda MP4/4 and an MP4/6. Technicians mill around the cars, one now three decades old, the other a mere slip of a thing at 27. The aero might seem blunt and unsophisticated compared with the modern era, but these machines are rich in detail: take, for instance, the stacked gearbox on the 1988 car, which seamlessly transmitted torque from the V6 turbo's lowline crank without the need for potentially unreliable angled driveshafts.

The drivers care little for these intricacies; they just want to drive: Vandoorne in the MP4/4, Button in the MP4/6, after a swift dash along the pitlane following the end of the Super GT demo race. "This is my favourite F1 car, ever," beams Vandoorne. "I'd drive it every day if I could."

"You just wouldn't believe the power of this thing," Button gushes, gesturing towards the 3.5-litre, 60-degree V12 concealed within the white-and-red shroud of the MP4/6's all-enveloping rear bodywork.

How the passage of time shifts perceptions. History records that, in period, Gerhard Berger greeted the then-new V12 with something of a 'meh' in testing, prompting Ayrton Senna to stamp his feet and usher Honda back to the drawing board to conjure a more grunty spec which arrived mid-season. By then, Senna had bagged enough wins in the opening races at Williams-Renault's expense - largely through reliability - that he held Nigel Mansell at bay to secure the drivers' and constructors' titles. 1991 was the last time a car with a V12 engine and/or a manual gearbox was the vehicle for those trophies. Indeed, the RA121-E is the only V12 ever to have won F1 world championships.

If Button is a touch disappointed that neither of the cars were ones driven by childhood hero Alain Prost, it doesn't show. Neither do the classic McLarens disappoint aurally: the V6 turbo barks and growls into life before settling into a churlish idle, the inevitable consequence of the ugly firing order; the V12 is simultaneously muscular yet shrill, and fingers-in-ears loud when Button dabs the throttle. It's almost a relief as they drive off for a combined lap of both layouts, cheered on by the fervent audience. Appropriately, perhaps, this highlight of the day begins as the sun gradually dips behind the spectator enclosure and the shadows lengthen.

The crowd, though, are too busy applauding Button and Vandoorne to rage against the dying of the light. They've more than had their money's worth; the Thanks Day, after all, is free to enter.

Button, we can predict, will be here for the next one. MP4/6 parked, helmet off, barely breaking a sweat, he watches approvingly as the technicians swoop to attend the becalmed machine; polishing cloths swat away errant dust particles, and a spotlessly white catch tray is placed delicately under the engine's oil breather pipe, which declines to emit a single drop.

"This year off from Formula 1 has been the best thing I possibly could have done because my love for racing is back," he says.

"The Super GT race I did last August [the Suzuka 1000km] was so exciting, there was so much fighting and overtaking, and it was really challenging - there's a lot of manufacturer competition, and a lot of talented drivers. That's what gets you excited, that competition.

"F1? My time was done there, but for racing itself my love is well and truly back."