| Following the end of the Second
World War Honda soon became world leaders in
motorcycle production and racing. By 1962 their
attention had turned to cars and the company
arranged a low profile entrance into Formula 1
with engineer Yoshio Nakamura and a base in
Amsterdam.
The first car was the RA271 and American
Ronnie Bucknum was the man picked to lead the
challenge, despite never having driven a single
seater before. His efforts were more than
adequate to secure a second season and he was
joined in 1965 by Richie Ginther who managed to
give the team its first win in Mexico.
The switch to the 3-litre formula was not
good news for Honda although the Mexico win did
inspire them to keep going and Soichiro Honda,
the company's chairman, agreed to fund the
development of a V12 engine. The unit was
extremely powerful but was always going to be
simply too heavy to be truly competitive. Honda
managed to recruit John Surtees to head the
team, although the weight problem meant that
even the former world champion could only manage
a third place in South Africa. A new car, the
RA300, arrived in time for Monza and Surtees
took it to victory after one of those stunning
slip-streaming battles for which the circuit was
most famous.
For 1968 the team realised that the weight
problem needed to be addressed and the team
again turned to Lola for help. The car was late
and instead the team entered the entirely Honda
built air-cooled RA302. Surtees refused to drive
the thing so Honda turned to the Frenchman Jo
Schlesser. Schlesser lost control of the car in
the early stages of the French Grand Prix at
Rouen and speared off the track, bursting into
flames. Schlesser died when the
magnesium-fuelled fire could not be controlled
by fire marshals.
The team withdrew from F1 at the end of the
season and did not return until the early 1980s
as a successful supplier of turbo engines.
Rumours of a full return are currently
circulating and many experts predict Honda will
take to the circuits again by the end of 1999. |
