It’s an early start to the motorsport weekend this week: 2am tomorrow morning, when the first practice session for the Japanese Formula 1 Grand Prix gets under way at Suzuka. The second session follows at 6am, so it’ll be nice to catch a bit of the BBC Red Button coverage with breakfast for the first time since the early fly-away races.

It gets busy on Sunday, and ambitiously I’m planning to tweet away all day, starting with the Formula 1 race at 6am. But we’ve discussed Formula 1 quite enough for now.

There’s an awful lot to be decided at Brands Hatch, where three races around the full GP circuit will decide the outcome of the 2009 British Touring Car Championship. Fabrizio Giovanardi is 13 points behind current leader Colin Turkington, Jason Plato is another 15 points back, and there are 45 points up for grabs. Plato is the only one of the three to have won a race in the last two meetings, but VX Racing and Team RAC have more opportunities for team tactics – so it should be a fantastic end to the season. The races are at 11.45am, 2.20pm and 5.10pm.

In amongst that lot we have to fit in MotoGP from Portugal. The big news there is that Casey Stoner will be back on the Ducati, so all eyes will be on him. I like the man, so hopefully he’ll be right back at the front, and with Dani Pedrosa make the championship battle between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo far from straight-forward. That’s at 1pm, with the 250cc at 11.15am and 125cc at 2.30pm – when Bradley Smith will be hoping to regain second place in the standings.