After two years at Fuji, the Japanese Grand Prix is returning to Suzuka - which means the experienced drivers are delighted to be back at a circuit they all revere, and the younger generation finally get to try the celebrated venue on something other than their games consoles.
It's a sign of how much has changed during Suzuka's absence that eight of the 20 drivers will be making their first F1 appearance at the track, and that the last grand prix there saw Fernando Alonso in a Renault battling a soon-to-retire Michael Schumacher for the world championship.
The 3.6 mile track is a relentless series of challenging, fast corners - headlined by the high speed snaking S bends, and the super-fast bravery test of the 130R.
By the mid-2000s its facilities were fading a little and it was little surprise when the F1 bosses decided to switch to Fuji - which had just benefited from a vastly expensive rebuild.
But even in its heyday, Fuji was not as great a test of driver skill as Suzuka, and its emasculated modern incarnation paled in comparison to the memory of Suzuka's sweeps and dips.
So a deal was done for the two tracks to share the race from this year onwards, only for Toyota to decide that hosting F1 at Fuji was no longer cost-effective, leaving the race at Suzuka for at least the next three years, despite the latter's owner Honda withdrawing from the sport.
The teams will be looking forward to checking out the facelift Suzuka has had during its absence, while the drivers will be pleased to discover that the track layout remains unchanged.
The only criticism levelled at Suzuka was that it lacked overtaking opportunities - for although the hairpin and chicane require heavy braking, the straight before the former is too short and approaching the latter through the 130R creates 'dirty air' issues.
But it was harder to sympathise with those complaints after the breathtaking 2005 race, which saw Kimi Raikkonen charge from 17th on the grid to victory, driving around the outside of Giancarlo Fisichella at the first corner to take the lead with a lap to go.
Even that move was surpassed by Alonso's jaw-dropping 200mph pass on no less a talent than Schumacher on the outside of the 130R earlier in the day.
The lesson was that overtaking definitely was possible, if the drivers put their minds to it.
The inside-out grid that set up that stunning race was the result of a rain shower in qualifying, and Suzuka is generally regarded as one of the tracks most susceptible to turbulent weather.
But curiously it tends to be in practice and qualifying, not the race, that rain intervenes - for apart from a damp start in 1995 and mid-race drizzle in 2000, Suzuka hasn't seen a wet GP since the 1994 downpour.
The Suzuka crowds are among the world's most passionate, and while their adoration was directed at Honda-powered Ayrton Senna in the early days, more recently it was Takuma Sato who received the adulation.
With Honda and Sato both gone, this year local interest is provided by Toyota and Kazuki Nakajima, and both can be expected to deliver something above their average this weekend - particularly Toyota, which tends to turn it up on home ground (and isn't shy about using a slim race load to guarantee some Saturday headlines) and is on a roll after Timo Glock's brilliant Singapore podium.
But modern development restrictions mean there won't be any repeat of the 'Suzuka Special' engines Honda used to produce - ultra-powerful, but fragile, hand grenade power units designed to produce unbelievable qualifying laps but unlikely to last much longer.
We won't be seeing the Suzuka specialists of the past either.
In the early 1990s the Japanese racing scene briefly became a fashionable - and lucrative - option for young European drivers, and the endless testing miles on offer in Japan meant the likes of Eddie Irvine and Heinz-Harald Frentzen were Suzuka experts once they reached F1.
Japan has since fallen off the talent-spotters' radar, but Nakajima and Adrian Sutil (whose Japanese Formula 3 title got his career back on track in 2006) know their way around Suzuka better than most and could shine this weekend.
Making form predictions in this wildly-fluctuating season is almost impossible, but Red Bull has certainly been looking forward to getting to Suzuka's ultra-fast corners, and is perhaps the favourite to win, even though the team's title hopes are now all but dead.
If the results of the last seven races reflected the whole season, then Rubens Barrichello would head to Japan narrowly fending off Raikkonen, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton in a very tense points battle, with Jenson Button and Mark Webber hanging on as outsiders.
But unfortunately for Barrichello, and luckily for Button, the first seven rounds of the year count too - which is why Button can clinch the championship this weekend if he out-scores his Brawn team-mate by five points.
To do that, he needs to either win with Barrichello off the podium, or take a top four finish with Rubens non-scoring, both of which seem fairly unlikely.
However given that nine of the 10 teams have had a car in the top three in qualifying or the race in the last three GPs, that Suzuka has so many unique characteristics and is uncharted territory for so many, the only reliable prediction is that whatever happens this weekend should be a fitting 'welcome back' for one of the sport's all-time favourite circuits.
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