Central Circuit Shared Track Day
May 27, 2009 by Justin Karow
Filed under Circuit Racing, Latest Articles
What I thought was going to be a mostly cloudy but fine day turned into thunderstorms and an early return home. That’s not to say it was a waste of time heading to Central Circuit on Sunday, quite the opposite actually! Not only did Trial Osaka have their scheduled ”Circuit Run”, but a whole heap of Honda NSXs and a trio of incredibly tough FD3Ss from Autocraft made an appearance too.
My camera gear got wet. I saw the sky darken and thought that the rain would hold out for at least 15 minutes more but that turned out to be very wishful thinking. Sporadic bursts of sunshine almost instantly turned to a pretty heavy electrical storm and downpour which lasted for the next few hours, long enough to put an end to my plans for the rest of the day and it was only 12:30pm!
Central Circuit organizes shared track days where half hour slots are reserved by various garages and car clubs for timed and untimed runs. Last Sunday I was under the impression the day was totally booked out by Trial garage in Osaka but they ended up only taking 3 slots while the rest were shared among others like the Hyogo NSX Owners Club and rotary specialists Autocraft.
It was a nice surprise to see the NSX owners club there as I was expecting to see only the Trial crew with their large group of customers. The NSX club didn’t organize any racing and only the more thoroughly tuned NSXs pushed moderately hard around the circuit. Still it was nice to see Honda’s finest in reasonably large numbers on the track at the same time. Advance garage made the trip from Kanagawa Prefecture to join the local guys and have some fun. Their shop demo NA1 had a beautiful set of throttle bodies looking up under the acrylic rear window and sounded like a MotoGP bike out on the track! Some of the other NSXs were equally as modified but for some reason the owners didn’t want photos taken of them. One owner, Fuji-san from Kobe brought is crazy wide body NA1 NSX which I’ll only say had nitrous and airbag suspension… look for a full feature soon!
Autocraft from Kyoto were there with their “Black Triple Stars” trio of FD3S Mazda RX-7s. All three have basically the same modifications but it was Ishii-san who boasted the most power and complete modifications. Luckily the sunshine held out just long enough to do a photo shoot with Ishii-san’s car so look out for a full feature on his car too!
By about 12:30pm the weather had well and truly set in and it was time to go. It’s surprising what you can see at Central Circuit even on regular shared track days and I’d even say it beats some of the more publicized sponsored race meetings!
Rain? What rain?
Words and Images: Justin Karow
Nice array of cars there, the NSX converted for a disabled driver is crazy, looks like a different setup to the disabled drifter too, gotta love the ingenuity.
NSX with nitrous and air bags
Should be an interesting feature on that and the rx7 too. Wouldn’t have picked that Legnum for an auto from the exterior, I was half expecting cage hoops through the interior 
Fuji-san (the owner of the nitroused and bagged NSX) was a real character too! You’d have to be to do that to an NSX I guess…
That Legnum looks ferocious!
Pity about the weather there Justin
Where is that celica carbon fibre rear quarter window from? It’s a work of art!
the 3 fd’s are hot.
cant wait for the feature,
which one is ishii-san’s ?
Dan: The middle one.
Tiang: Not sure where those carbon quarter windows come from…
ozvr4.com would love an article on that Legnum!
Lee: I asked the owner of the Legnum if he’d allow me to take more pics but he was trying to get as much track time as possible so I went and concentrated on the RX-7… then the rain came down! If I see him again I’ll make sure to do a full write up.