Shiro Sagisu with Somethin' Special -- Full Flight

 

There is a young weather forecaster on Japan's "Weathernews Live" broadcast by the name of Rinon Oshima（大島璃音）who is currently in her third year and has picked up quite a popular following. She's got a few hobbies of which one is Formula One racing, and if it weren't for her production staff, she would probably be running off at the mouth about F1 and all of her favourite drivers such as Max Verstappen instead of giving the weather.

It's often the case that whenever movies or TV shows from abroad arrive in Japan, a Japanese pop song is placed in during the ending credits as a promotional tune for both itself and the movie/show. The one example that I remember well was for the TV Asahi broadcast of "The X-Files" when B'z's "Love Phantom" was the song used, and it fit quite well.

Well, by luck, I came across this particular song that got picked up by YouTuber Marty Mcflies. "Full Flight" is an instrumental for the soundtrack of the 1980 F1 documentary "Pole Position 2", a sequel to the original movie which was an Italian-produced film titled "Formula uno, febbre della velocità" from 1978; its English title is "Speed Fever". As I mentioned above, the changing of the music in Japan for any imported movies or TV shows apparently applied to "Pole Position 2" as well with composer Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）taking care of the honours here.

Sagisu and his Somethin' Special band took care of "Full Flight" which is a surprisingly romantic and contemplative piece with those silky strings and a synthesizer (?) in the lead. There's also a nice and light funkiness underlying everything. I've never seen the Japanese edition of "Pole Position 2" but I can imagine that something like "Full Flight" could be used more for the off-track scenes. Maybe the drivers are simply hanging out at home or at the bar while this is playing.

One of the commenters for the YouTube video of "Full Flight" provided a link to "Pole Position 2" which led me to the following video below.