OCTOBER 8, 2004

And the rains came down

On Friday morning the Formula 1 circus woke to rain, the precursor of what is expected to be a very wet weekend in the Mie Prefecture as Typhoon Number 22 (the Japanese do not name their typhoons) heads northward towards the main Japanese island of Honshu. The big fear amongst the F1 teams is that the weather will be so bad that the race will have to be cancelled and, according to Takuma Sato, this is possible.

"A few weeks ago we were hit by a big typhoon and all of Turn One and Turn Two was completely flooded. We don't want to see that because if that happens we have to stop the race completely and that would be sad."

What Sato did not say was the extent to which the track was flooded. Our sources say that when Typhoon 21 went through the area Turns One and Two were at least four feet under water.

The interesting thing is that typhoons are very unpredictable and will not necessarily go down a predicted route. It is therefore possible that the storm could turn east or west and while that would mean heavy rainfall for the Suzuka area it would not be anywhere near as bad as if it continues in a straight line.