Track Difficulties
Twin Ring is a separate-but-combined road-and-oval track (as opposed to 'roval' tracks common in the United States), and the decision to include a full road course contained largely within the oval necessitated design compromises. For spectators, sightlines can be extremely poor for road-course races, as the grandstands are much further back than usual. The oval course blocks the view of much of the road course, including the best passing point on the track, and several large-screen televisions are needed. Seating outside the grandstand is limited to areas of the infield and along the backstraight of the road course.
Track access is a major concern, with only two entry and exit points by two-lane public road. Motegi is not a particularly large town, and accommodation is virtually non-existent close to the track, except for the on-site hotel. Train links to the area are extremely limited (the major regional lines, JR East and Tobu Railway do not service the area), nor has a planned superhighway been completed. Thus the stated track capacity (about 65,000) is dictated largely by traffic flow, not by actual seating capacity (estimated to be nearly 100,000 for road-course events, 80,000 for the oval).
In 2011 Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo proposed to boycott the MotoGP race out of fears for their health from radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant even though all the independent scientific experts including the World Health Organization and Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency have stated that it is safe to live permanently 80 km or more from the plant. Motegi is more than 120 km from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In the end, all the teams showed up for the race.
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—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
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