Honda: How It All Started
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- 8W Special, November 18, 2000
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- Ronnie Bucknum -
An American unknown riding the honour of Japan, by Mattijs
Diepraam
- Honda RC101 -
Honda's after-hours F1 project, by Rainer Nyberg
Who?
Richie Ginther
What?
Honda RA272
Where?
Magdalena-Mixhuca
When?
1965 Mexican GP
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Why?
Richie Ginther wins the last Grand Prix of the 1.5-litre formula
and Honda's first.
It is one of those many true episodes that John Frankenheimer
uses for his 1966 epos Grand Prix. Only the location of
the grand finale in this American Dream is relocated from Mexico
to Monza. It is James Garner alias Pete Aron who finally wins
the championship. Even the details are correct. Like Garner in
the movie, Richie Ginther was also at BRM before he was hired by
Honda. However, Ginther was not Honda's first GP driver. This
honour belongs to his American fellow driver Ronnie Bucknum. It
was he who was taken on by Honda for the first tests in 1964.
Sportscar driver Bucknum was not well known in the scene, not
even experts had heard of him until his first GP on the
Nürburgring.
Soichiro Honda's motorcycles ruled the scene in the beginning of
the sixties, taking many championships. Honda himself was a
passionate car driver and engineer and he wanted to step into
Formula 1. At the age of 22 he had built his first racer
himself. He used a V8 Curtis Wright plane engine and with this
vehicle it propelled he set a Japanese speed record. After a
heavy accident with this car, Honda had to promise to his family
never to race again. So he decided to enter the racing scene as
a constructor and entrant. At this time, his first road car, the
S800 sports coupe, came onto the market.
Honda formed a project team under the supervision of his
development engineer, Yoshio Nakamura. A person with the same
name is one of the characters in the movie
Grand Prix. The team bought a 1962 Cooper chassis for close
examination. In order to be near enough to the European racing
community, Honda set up an own basis at Zandvoort. Work with the
Cooper chassis reached a dead end and so they decided to develop
and built a chassis of their own. Negotiations with Brabham (at
first) but also with Lotus for co-operation led to nothing. This
prompted Honda in building its first own test car which was
tried out at Zandvoort. A special feature of the engine was the
way it was built into the chassis. Honda used its motorcycle
technology to good effect and constructed a lightweight, high
revving, small 12-cylinder engine for competition in the
1.5-litre class. The engine was mounted transversely into the
chassis.
From this prototype the first GP car was derived named
RA271.
This car was entered in its first GP at the Nürburgring. Ronnie
Bucknum qualified 22nd and last, one minute off Surtees' pole
and 20 seconds off his next rival. But he made a good debut and
got up to 10th place in the race. On lap 12 (of 15) the steering
broke and this forced Bucknum into an accident and,
subsequently, retirement. It was his first race in a single-seater!
In Monza Honda appeared with a new chassis (02). There were
raised eyebrows as Bucknum qualified 10th, ahead of Jack Brabham!
He then drove up to a very good fifth in the race until he has
to call it a day due to fading brakes. Chassis 271/02 got its
last chance at the US GP but this time the loud little
high-revving engine overheated after 50 of the 110 laps at
Watkins Glen.
Honda passed by on the last outing at Mexico, instead continuing
with further development of the car. The 271 was a quick car, no
doubt, but it had to be more reliable to be really competitive.
And with its humpback, it wasn't a particularly pretty car. So
well into the 1965 season Bucknum was at the track driving
endless testing kilometres. In one of these tests at Suzuka the
steering broke again. This time Bucknum wasn't so lucky,
injuring his leg severely. It forced him to pause in the middle
of the season.
Richie Ginther had been hired at the beginning of 1965. He was a
good driver and had scored 23 world championchip points the year
before for BRM. Actually he was the most experienced driver
Honda could get at this point. Ginther had raced in sportscars
together with von Trips and Phil Hill for Ferrari and could look
back on 39 GPs, 7 of them for Ferrari, for whom he also used to
work as a mechanic/driver. However, most of Richie's GPs were
with BRM. At BRM Ginther was overshadowed by Graham Hill, and
although he had scored the same number of points as Hill in
1964, he lost 5 of them because of the points deduction rules in
force those days. Otherways he and Hill would have been joint
second in the championships. What Ginther needed for his career
was a victory and he hoped to receive it with Honda.
The new, slimmer, RA 272 was ready for Monaco '65. The narrow
streets of the principality did not fit the car, so
Bucknum and Ginther were at the back of the grid. Ginther
had problems with gear selection and retired before the end of
the first lap, while Bucknum was out soon, too, also with
gearbox trouble. More retirements follow in the course of the
season - the
RA 272>didn't seem to get into its swing. In the middle of
the season Bucknum was forced to pause due to his broken leg
suffered at Suzuka. There was some hope at Spa and Zandvoort
where Ginther finished the race sixth, gaining Honda's first
points. In the Netherlands he even briefly led the race for two
laps ahead of Clark and Hill, after qualifying fourth. But then
he spun the lead away, twice, indicating that the Honda had a
problem to hold the road under a full load of fuel at the
beginning of a race. Another spin followed at Silverstone, where
just one car was entered, Ginther qualifying next to Clark and
Hill on the front row. But the car at least showed its potential
on these tracks. By the end of the season the Japanese
technicians could claim 240bhp at 11,000rpm, stating that it
could hold 14,000 revs for a short time without being destroyed.
In that respect it was the
strongest engine of F1's 1.5-litre era which had begun in
1961. In those days even the Ferrari Dinos had 80bhp less. A
remarkable increase in power over this five-year period, without
the use of turbos of course. The reference engine in these years
was still the V8 Climax from Coventry, used by the British works
teams Cooper, Lotus and Brabham, simultaneously. Together with
the Honda engine, Ferrari, Climax and BRM only 4 different
engines were fielded in most of the 1965 GPs. The usable
bandwidth of revs was very narrow in the Honda though, so that
was naturally a disadvantage on narrow courses.
Honda did not enter for Germany, instead going to Italy. In
Monza they showed better form and the returning Bucknum
qualified sixth, having recoverd from his accident. However,
both cars retired in the race. At the Glen Ginther finished 7th
after he had started the race from 3rd place. Finally, the car
was strong enough to cover a race distance, so even Bucknum gets
classified 13th.
October 24th, 1965: the last Grand Epreuve of the 1.5-litre era.
It is only for the fourth time that a Grand Prix is held at the
high altitude of Mexico City. Engine and carburettor/injection
settings (Honda used an own development of injection after
having tried 6 (!) carbs for 12 cylinders in the beginning) are
difficult to find for the engineers at this altitude of more
than 6,000 feet. Even the Mexicans take special notice of the
strange white Japanese car with its black anodized suspensions,
contrary to the chroming of the english cars. One witness of the
time recalls that local hero, Mexican Moises Solana was offered
Bucknum's ride but refused to take the car because of its looks
and preferred to take the Lotus which he reckoned to be more
esthetical...
Richie Ginther qualified his RA272 in third, Bucknum was 10th
(behind Solana). Clark sat on pole, with Gurney in the Brabham
next to him. Innes Ireland's perfomance was so bad that he got
fired before the race. Another local hope, Pedro Rodriguez in a
Ferrari is only 13th. On the morning of race day Richie Ginther
swops his car with Bucknum's chassis because it handled better,
clearly showing that Ginther was regarded the No.1 in the team.
At the start, Ginther managed to take the lead immediately and
got ahead of his strongest rival in the field, Clark, who by now
was World Champion already. The Scot had secured the title as
early as the Nürburgring. Then Clark's car developed engine
trouble and after nine laps in pursuit of Ginther the champion
had to call it a day. Brabham, Hill and Gurney remained as
Ginther's hottest competitors. Brabham's car suffered from an
oil leak since lap 40, with Hill's BRM also breaking down near
the end. With only the attention of Dan Gurney remaining Richie
Ginther fought of his countryman's attacks to take victory after
65 laps with the narrow lead of only three seconds, in a race he
managed to lead flag to flag. A convincing performance of car
and driver. Bucknum also profited from the retirements and
earned a fifth place, one lap down but ahead of the Ferraris of
Pedro Rodriguez and Lorenzo Bandini. The claim in this
newspaper clipping is wishful thinking, actually Bucknum was
ahead of Solana. Those two points remained the single
achievement of his Formula One career.
After crossing the finish line the Honda (and all the other
1.5-litre cars) were obsolete on the spot. The sensation was
perfect, however. Nobody dared to talk of Honda as those
motorcycle people. The small Japanese company had finally taken
its ticket into the GP circus and was determined to stay there
as a respected manufacturer/entrant in the years to come. But
things did not develop as brilliantly as expected, neither for
Honda nor for
Ginther or Bucknum.
For the 1966 season Honda constructed a 3-litre car, as did all
the others, but could not get it ready for the curtain raiser
races. Ginther went to Cooper-Maserati and finished the first
races as an also-ran. The new Honda only appeared towards the
end of the season (Monza) and was definitely too heavy. The
RA273 (90° 2992cc V12) showed 740kgs on the scale, with the
weight limit at 500kgs. The engine developed a good 400bhp right
from the beginning but this did not pay off because of the
overweight. A new car had to be designed, so Honda started it
all over again. In co-operation with Lola they produced the new
RA300 ("Hondola") one year later, towards the end of 1967. The
new master in the cockpit was former world champion John Surtees
and he managed a Monza victory in a fotofinish duel with Jack
Brabham. This victory was overshadowed by the hero of the day,
Clark, who had put in one of his most sensational drives ever,
working his way back into the lead after a pit stop for tyres,
being one lap down. In the final lap his car ran out of fuel due
to a miscalculation of the team and he finished a disconsolate
third. But Honda had claimed its second GP victory with an
engine producing some 412bhp by now.
What had happened to our heroes of Mexico? Both had appeared in
two 1966 races in the RA273 in the US, and again in Mexico (Ginther
finished 4th, and Bucknum 8th). These were both their last GP
entries. Bucknum later raced in US sportscars, quite
successfully, and also at Indy (15th 1970). His son Jeff is an
active driver today in US "Star Formula Mazda" series. Ronnie
Bucknum died in 1992.
Richie Ginther was entered for one more GP, but in the end he
missed qualifying for Monaco 1967 in Dan Gurney's Eagle-Weslake.
Days before he jumped out of his cockpit during Indianapolis
qualifying and hang up his helmet for good. It is said that he
could not cope with the ever increasing commercialism of racing.
Anyhow, the rest of Richie Ginther's life wasn't crowned by
success, to say the least. He died in 1989, shortly after paying
a visit to England, where he had been invited by BRM to
celebrate their 40th anniversary. During his last years Richie
had lived in a trailer. In Mexico. Irony of fate?
In 1965 a co-operation between Honda and Brabham was started but
only for Formula 2 cars, because Jack Brabham was contracted to
Australian engine supplier Repco for F1. Honda delivered its
first F2 engine to Brabham in England, but this showed a weak
performance. But from 1966 on the Japanese supplied Jack with a
great new 1000cc powerplant that showed many new construction
features. It was implemented in Ron Tauranac's new design, the
BT18. With it, Denny Hulme and Jack Brabham won each and every
F2 race that season, with one exception.
John Surtees' new F1 team mate for 1968 was Jo Schlesser. After
Jo's fatal accident in the cockpit of the Honda TA302 on lap 4
of the French GP, Honda withdrew from F1 as an entrant by the
end of the season. |
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