honda mag 58
TRANSCRIPT
HONDA MAG 58FOrMulA 1® speciAl eDitiON
MArcH 2015
Honda returns to f1
If Honda does not race, there is no Honda.
Soichiro Honda
Honda and McLaren rejoin forcesIntroduction 6
Ron Dennis: Consumed by the challenge 8
The McLaren-Honda MP4-30 14
The RA615H Power unit components 16
The MP4-30 Chassis in detail 19
F1’s marathon man: Jenson Button 20
Back to a different future: Fernando Alonso 24
The First Era: 1964 to 1968There was a lot going on in 1964 28
The first red letter day 30
The return to power: 1966 and all that 32
The quiet American: Richie Ginther 34
The English all-rounder: John Surtees 35
The Second Era: 1983 to 1992 Power behind the throne 36
Williams-Honda World Champions 38
The Dream Team: The first McLaren-Honda Partnership, 1988-92 40
The Third Era: 2000 to 2008 Just because Honda loves racing 44
On the Button: The high-point of the third era 48
The F1 world in 2015 20 years of Grand Prix racing in Melbourne 50
The season ahead: A developing world 51
NSX – A supercar evolved NSX – Honda’s return to power 54
Honda F1 flash back 56
HR-V: Honda off the track
This year, Honda is just as exciting off the track 58
Statistical Digest Honda’s F1 record 62
Things to see and do in Melbourne on GP weekendFood 70
Battle of the burgers 72
Shop 74
Play 76
editor: stuart sykes; executive editor: paul Harley; Design: cassie Dalton. All photos were supplied by lAt photo, latphoto.co.uk. All other images are owned by Honda unless otherwise specified. For general enquiries regarding Honda motor vehicle products or services, contact Honda Australia on 1800 804 954.
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The speaker is Yasuhisa Arai, Senior Managing Officer of Honda R&D, on the day the new McLaren-Honda MP4-30 is shown off for the first time. Arai-san is right: not every day – but it isn’t the first time Honda has enjoyed the sense of excitement he describes.
Three times before Honda has experienced the shock of the new: in 1964, when the company made its Formula 1 debut, in 1983 when it entered the turbo-charged fray again, and in 2000 when it marked the end of the twentieth century with a brave decision to back a team that seemed like potential champions for the twenty-first.
Sixty years have come and gone since the company’s founder, Soichiro Honda, first launched his products on to the world racing stage. They were two-wheeled at first but by May 1962 the decision had been taken to take Honda into Formula 1. Japan’s youngest car company was about to take on the old-established legends of European racing…
The rest, as they say, is history. Honda’s name is synonymous with some of the finest moments ever seen in Grand Prix racing, both as a constructor and as the supplier of engines to F1’s most successful teams.
The finest steel, they say, is tempered in the hottest flame: the technical crucible of F1 has forged the engineering genius that underpins one of the world’s most innovative manufacturers.
With another new dawn on the horizon, the return of Honda revives one of the most thrilling partnerships in the six and a half decades of World Championship racing. The McLaren-Honda MP4-30 is the latest creation to face the challenge Honda relishes most: competing against the best and coming out on top.
As Yasuhisa Arai also observed, “We’re about to commence a long season, with numerous challenges, but Honda is determined to face them head-on. After all, we’re here to drive Formula 1’s technology forward and give our fans a thrilling ride.”
“It’s not every day that you’re involved in a launch of a new Formula 1 car and
the start-up of a new partnership”
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Consumed by the challengeThe Formula 1 landscape has changed radically since the McLaren-Honda partnership dominated. Can these two giants of Grand Prix racing become the sport’s leading force once more? Timothy Collings asked the man who should know: McLaren boss Ron Dennis.
Monza, September 6, 2014: Twenty-four hours before the Italian Grand Prix, an annual celebration of motor racing passions at a venue synonymous with drama and speed, all is calm at the McLaren Brand Centre, the racing team’s paddock headquarters.
Lunch is over. Guests sip hot and cold drinks and glance across an open atrium at giant screens broadcasting live pictures of the action at the Autodromo Nazionale.
Upstairs, in an office overlooking the crowds milling outside rival team motor-homes, Ron Dennis stands and, then, strides towards me. A broad smile and firm handshake swiftly follow. “You haven’t changed at all,” says the Chairman of McLaren Automotive and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the McLaren Group.
The goodwill is reciprocated.
At 67, Dennis remains a formidable figure in Formula 1, a man whose achievements and sustained success set the standard.
“How long have we known each other?” he asks. “It’s a long time...”
The answer is 27 years and, thankfully for your correspondent, he was not at all displeased to learn of the passage of so much time; or to be reminded of the balmy afternoon in the same royal park, in 1987, when McLaren had announced their original union with Honda and that amazing driver pairing of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.
“Yes, of course,” he recalled. And do you have good memories of that day? I asked.
“Yes, that announcement, within the grounds of the royal park, but just outside the gates of the paddock, was the conclusion of a very long series of discussions and negotiations to ensure the continued success of the team. It was a carefully considered strategy, which secured us a partnership with the most
successful and pioneering engine manufacturer in Grand Prix racing, and forged for us a relationship with the most exciting and talented driver the sport has ever known.
“The effort and attention that we placed on those preparations went on to serve us very well: we created a partnership that brought us unprecedented success – indeed, McLaren and Honda won 44 out of the 80 Grands Prix we contested together, and that’s more than a 50 per cent success rate.
“And, now, here we are again, by coincidence, back at Monza, the very place where we announced that relationship with Honda in 1987.”
It seems extraordinary that 27 years have passed and once again McLaren and Honda are to be a partnership in Formula 1. Dennis, clearly, is excited at the prospect and stimulated by their past glories.
“The unusual thing about that announcement, perhaps, was that it was devoid of all branding and took
place inside the Philip Morris unit, outside the circuit grounds, which enabled us to avoid any embarrassment either for Lotus, for whom Ayrton was driving at the time, or for our engine partners TAG Turbo.
“And, of course, it was here again that we collected another statistic to remember – or maybe to forget – in 1988. What a start we had in that first year when we won 15 of 16 races in the first season of the partnership! The only race we didn’t win was the Italian Grand Prix, here at Monza, ironically, when Ayrton was leading three laps from the finish only to be wrong-footed by Jean-Louis Schlesser at the chicane and end up stranded across a kerb.
“Of course, Monza being Monza, there weren’t too many marshals rushing to help him back into the race! It worked for them, too, since it was Gerhard Berger who went on to win the race in a Ferrari... And, you know, to this day I mercilessly pull Jean-Louis’ leg every time I meet him in the course of our motor racing travels!”
Ron Dennis
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Clearly, they were memorable days and that was a memorable season. Now, McLaren are at the threshold of another partnership with Honda. What were the challenges then and what are the challenges this time? Does it feel different? How much progress has been made?
“I think there were many challenges, as always in Formula 1. But our initial objective with Honda was to try to bridge the cultural gap that exists between our two countries – differences that also existed in the way we worked together.
“I think we were very successful in quickly establishing a deep level of trust and understanding. Nonetheless, we faced many challenges from our rivals, who quickly grew suspicious that our successes during that ’88 season could not have been achieved by fair means. For instance, we had to endure never-ending scrutiny of our fuel tank, because the other teams simply couldn’t believe we were achieving our performance within the legal fuel limits.
“Elsewhere, we faced the internal challenge of managing the relationship of our drivers – two of the best ever to be in the same team at one time. I look back at that with some pride and feel it was reasonably well done. Granted, it could have been done better – that’s true of anything and indeed it’s a mantra that serves to motivate our entire organisation – but, by and large, it was disciplined and well contained within the team.”
In 1988, Senna won the drivers’ world title with 90 points (from his 11 best results), ahead of Prost on 87. In the constructors’ championship McLaren were winners with 199 points, a long way ahead of Ferrari on 65. It was a season of profound McLaren domination and a red-hot rivalry between their drivers, a fight between teammates that remains legendary to this day. The Honda partnership with McLaren made a deep mark that year.
“I think one of the strategies that became very successful as a method of relaxing the atmosphere was the use of humour – and that, of course, was easier to achieve with Ayrton and Gerhard [Berger], because Gerhard was such a fun-loving practical joker, than it had been with Ayrton and Alain before that. The Honda guys initially seemed somewhat bemused by it, but eventually they realised that, while working hard was always paramount, it was also important to relax and form friendships.”
It is time to look forward. What has changed? Is it merely technological or more complex?
“Now, together, I want us to collaborate on the creation of a deep understanding of each company’s mindset and culture, both on and off the circuit. We must do that together, because mutual empathy leads to enhanced combined productivity. With that in mind, I intend that a team-building process be hard-wired into our modus operandi, and indeed that’s already taking place.
“In the past 20 years, the internet – and in particular the growth of social media and the new ways in which people now experience moving images – have changed the way in which media, consumers and fans perceive brands. However, despite that, the true essence of a company as great as Honda remains: I’m glad to say that it’s already clear from our discussions that the innovative engineering ethos of Mr. Honda lives on, and that the company he founded is still a world leader in the field of state-of-the-art engine technology. Specifically, in a McLaren-Honda context, it relishes, and will continue to relish, the challenge of synchronising and optimising the integration and interaction of ERS, KERS and a turbocharged 1.6-litre V6 engine.
2015 (from left) Honda R&D Co., Ltd. Senior Managing Officer, Chief Officer of Motor Sport Yasuhisa Arai; Honda Motor Co., Ltd. President; Chief Executive Officer and Representative Director Takanobu Ito, McLaren-Honda driver Fernando Alonso; McLaren-Honda driver Jenson Button; and McLaren Technology Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ron Dennis.
“We’ll achieve a lot together, of that I’m certain, and, as I say, familiarity with and knowledge of each other’s working practices will expedite that. When we worked together in the 1980s and ’90s, Honda was a multinational and multilateral corporation whereas McLaren was a more parochial single-discipline company focused on Formula 1 alone. Since that time, McLaren has grown and diversified significantly, and we’re now truly global too. We have car dealerships all over the world, and divisional offices in Asia as well as America. McLaren Automotive and McLaren Applied Technologies are
leading that charge. Honda is still an order of magnitude larger than McLaren – of course it is – but the delta between our cultural outlooks has narrowed, which can only be a good thing.
“Having said that, Formula 1 teams must be lean and nimble, and during the course of the past few months we’ve been making changes at McLaren that will achieve that. We’re seeing the fruits of that restructuring work already.
“All in all, I firmly believe we’re now better equipped than ever to work together.”
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Loyalty is extremely important to me – to everyone at McLaren
Having been briefed that this interview was unlikely to be filled with detailed answers revealing the secrets surrounding the schedule of development, testing and performances of the prototype work leading to 2015, it was still imperative to prod for answers.
Sooner? When? What does that mean – and what is success? And will the new partnership with Honda lead to competitive technological innovation?
“I’m reluctant to make predictions, but, based on all that I know, I see no reason why we won’t begin to move forward relatively rapidly,” said Dennis. “It’s a difficult thing to predict, as we don’t know how much progress other teams will make before the start of next season, though.
“But I can state that, at no point in the dialogue that has taken place between our two companies, have we even sought to pinpoint a time-frame for the attainment of on-track success. Clearly, our objective is to try to win our first Grand Prix together. That’s a big challenge, but is it an unrealistic one? I’d prefer to call it an ambitious one. So it’ll be difficult, yes, but not impossible. To be clear, I’m not saying it’ll happen; what I’m saying is that we’ll strive to make it happen, which is a subtly different thing.”
Aware of how such ambitions could be interpreted, or misinterpreted, he added:
“Loyalty is extremely important to me – to everyone at McLaren – so I want to emphasise that we’ve had a very successful partnership with Mercedes-Benz. They’ve been a fantastically loyal partner for many years – and we’re determined to bring the curtain down on our partnership in the best possible way: by bringing each other more success.
“Next year, though, our first season of our new partnership with Honda, the technical regulations will remain relatively stable. So, now, together, we have the time to look into areas in which innovation and lateral thinking will increase our competitiveness. We’ll do that in a rigorous and disciplined way, so as to add real value to a sound and solid engineering-based strategy. Our first aim is to establish a good base performance from the power unit, and a solid, reliable and driveable aero package ahead of the first race. With those principles established, we can then start to think about how strategy and optimal deployment of ERS and KERS will add supplementary benefits.”
There are visitors, including Alain Prost, waiting outside the office. The Frenchman looks little different. His hair may be a bit grey, but he has the same slight physique and his silhouette, seen through the window blinds, is a reminder that 27 years may have passed, but 2015 is almost upon us. Dennis is aware it is time to wrap things up.
“The key to turning a modern Formula 1 organisation from a good team to a great one is understanding and exploiting every single performance element of the car and the team,” he adds. “In all my time in Formula 1, I honestly don’t think there has been an era in which the relationship between engine and chassis has required such a high level of focus and integration – it’s a tremendous challenge, but a hugely satisfying one. But we’re consumed by that challenge, and we relish it.”
Another broad smile signals the end. It may be nearly three decades since Honda and McLaren initiated their last partnership, but it is easy to sense the alchemy. Like your correspondent, Dennis may be a few years older, but he has lost none of the inner drive. Team directors up and down the Formula 1 pit lane should beware. This is a partnership being designed and built to win.
Ron Dennis
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The McLaren-Honda MP4-30WHy?It’s a simple question but in the answer lies a mass of detail. Why is Honda back in Formula 1? A detailed examination of the car that will carry the company’s colours once more should help us understand why Honda is back – and back in partnership with McLaren.
When the announcement was made in May 2013, Takanobu Ito, President and CEO of Honda Motor Company, offered the clearest explanation.
“Honda has a long history of advancing our technologies and nurturing our people by participating in the world’s most prestigious automobile racing series. The new F1 regulations [for 2014 and beyond] with their significant environmental focus will inspire even greater development of our own advanced technologies and this is central to our participation in F1.”
“We have the greatest respect for the FIA’s decision to introduce these new regulations that are both highly challenging but also attractive to manufacturers that pursue environmental technologies.”
Honda’s previous partnership with McLaren embraced three successful engine configurations: 1.5-litre turbo V6, 3-5-litre naturally-aspirated V10 and 3.5-litre naturally-aspirated V12. The new partnership will be driven by a complex ‘power unit’ of which the internal combustion engine is just one component.
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The Power Unit’s minimum weight is 145 kilograms; each driver is allotted four power units per season with a sliding scale of grid penalties for any excessive replacement of the various components.
The sport’s authorities have deliberately sought to mirror major manufacturers’ road-car philosophies by importing hybrid technology into the premier category of motor sport. With severe restrictions on the number of Power Units available to each competitor and a concomitant restriction on the amount of fuel that can be used – 100 kilograms per Grand Prix at a carefully monitored rate of flow – F1 is currently in a ‘green’ era that reflects global concerns with efficiency and performance.
In short, racing is a paradox – how to extract maximum power from minimum resources – which Honda’s engineers relish. The car that will carry Honda’s RA615H power units is the McLaren MP4-30.
tHe ra615H PoWer unIt coMPonents:Internal Combustion Engine
– 1.6-litre V6 in a 90-degree vee, 15,000 rpm
Energy Recovery System
– Motor Generator Unit-Kinetic – crankshaft-coupled, 50,000 rpm
– Motor Generator Unit-Heat – turbo-coupled, 125,000 rpm
– Energy Store – maximum storage 4 megajoules per lap
Turbocharger
Control Electronics
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WHy – tHat questIon agaIn – tHe desIgnatIon?This will be the latest in a line of McLaren F1 cars that dates back to 1981 – an eternity in Grand Prix racing. McLaren International was born in 1980, a new company built on the existing McLaren race team, the Project 4 team with which an aspiring owner by the name of Ron Dennis was campaigning in F2, F3 and the ProCar series, and a major sponsor whose name was for many years synonymous with McLaren: Marlboro.
The innovative genius of engineer John Barnard was behind the first of the new breed of McLarens: Marlboro Project 4 number one or MP4-1 for ease of reference. Its derivatives and successors have been among the most successful and legendary Grand Prix cars in World Championship history, none more so than the MP4/4 which won 15 of the 16 races in the 1988 season – the first year of the first McLaren-Honda partnership.
tHe MP4-30 cHassIs In detaIL:– Carbon-fibre composite monocoque
– Carbon-fibre composite bodywork – engine cover, sidepods, floor, nose wings
– Carbon-fibre wishbone/pushrod front suspension
– Carbon-fibre wishbone/pullrod rear suspension
– Electronics by McLaren Applied Technologies
– Carbon brake discs and pads
– Pirelli P Zero racing tyres
– Overall weight 702 kilograms (with driver, without fuel)
An F1 car is among the most beautiful and purposeful of all engineering achievements, a sophisticated marriage of form and function. The McLaren-Honda MP4-30 is an extraordinary addition both to the MP4 heritage and to the shared philosophies of the two companies.
As McLaren’s Racing Director Éric Boullier says, “McLaren and Honda are completely integrated and united in our purpose, and we share a fantastic sense of optimism: that together, in time, we’ll create another legacy of success.”
WHy not?
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drIver ProfILe: jenson ButtonHeading into his sixteenth season as a Formula 1 driver, Jenson Button has contested more Grands Prix than any other driver on the grid. The last race of 2014 was the 35-year-old Englishman’s 266th World Championship race. Only his former teammate at Honda, Rubens Barrichello with 323 and Michael Schumacher with 307 have started more often, and both drivers’ F1 careers are long over.
Born on January 9, 1980, Jenson Alexander Lyons Button went through only a brief racing apprenticeship before graduating to the sport’s leading category. A Formula Ford title followed by third place in the British Formula 3 series in 1999 earned the youngster from Frome, in England’s West Country, F1 tests with both Prost and Williams.
Button made his Grand Prix debut here in Australia for Williams in 2000. It did not go well – at least not to begin with. Jenson spun into the wall during Friday free practice; his car suffered fuel pressure failure and he switched to the spare for qualifying, but was caught out by a late-session red flag and started 21st from the back row of the grid.
What followed, though, was “a nice steady race”, in his own words, brought to a premature end by engine failure after 46 laps. No matter: the next round in Brazil brought Button’s first World Championship point for sixth place and he ended the season with 12 of them and eighth place overall.
To make way for the meteoric rise of Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, Button was ‘loaned’ to Benetton in 2001 and stayed on under Renault ownership for 2002.
F1’s marathon man
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Between 2003 and 2005, Jenson raced for BAR-Honda and stayed with Honda when the company decided to become constructors again in their own right in 2006. His victory at the Hungaroring in Budapest that season was the team’s solitary success before Honda withdrew in late 2008.
Button stuck to his guns, put his faith in Ross Brawn after a buy-out – and went on to take the World Championship in 2009, one of the most popular title-winners in F1 history. Since 2010 he has been with McLaren, taking eight victories to date, one pole position and six fastest laps.
In recent years Jenson has added intense fitness to his skills as a driver. A keen triathlete and marathon runner, he has a best mark of two hours and 58 minutes for the gruelling 42-km event and plans to better that mark in 2015.
Married to Japanese former model Jessica Michibata in Hawaii at the end of 2014, Button is now acknowledged as one of the most likeable and well-rounded figures in the F1 paddock. The maturing of his character has been the ideal complement to the smoothness of his racing style; one of the senior men on the grid, with 15 Grand Prix victories and a World Championship in his locker, his appetite for success is undiminished.
Jenson Button is truly F1’s marathon man
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drIver ProfILe: fernando aLonso “It’s different – it’s more open and I’m different as well.”
That’s Fernando Alonso explaining his reasons for returning to McLaren, for whom he drove for one controversial season in 2007.
“I was 25 years old when I joined McLaren the first time, so I’m definitely different,” said the Spaniard, now 33. “I think it’s the perfect time to re-join because we share some goals. The team is more open and more international with people from many teams joining McLaren this year.” The past is gone. For now, the future is all that matters to Alonso.
Amusing, independent, intelligent, opinionated and private, a citizen of Oviedo in his native Asturias in northern Spain, and once of Oxford, England’s classical university city of dreaming spires, Alonso plays chess, backgammon, poker and soccer, enjoys a practical joke, makes original use of his own Twitter account and loves riding a bike to keep fit in the sharp clean air of his homeland.
Alonso made his debut at Albert Park with Paul Stoddart’s Minardi team in the 2001 Australian Grand Prix. It was a stunning start: he out-qualified teammate Tarso Marques by 2.6 seconds.
Only 19 when he started with Stoddart, he grew up with the Australian’s wry humour before moving to sample the ‘beat generation’ Benetton-turned-to-Renault outfit where, for a year, he was test driver and reserve, travelling to all the races in 2002. His strong personality grew in that character-forming season.
Back to a different future
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Ironically enough in 2003, when Jenson Button was dropped by Renault, Alonso was promoted from his junior role to replace the popular Englishman who will be his McLaren-Honda teammate in 2015.
By September 2005, with Renault, Alonso had become the sport’s youngest World Champion to that date. He was also Spain’s first great single-seat racing driver,
inspiring an interest in motor sport that transformed the landscape of Hispanic sport by switching attention away from bullfighting and the great football clubs in Barcelona and Madrid.
First time around with McLaren, Alonso – signed as a double World Champion to partner another English prodigy in Lewis Hamilton – left the team just one turbulent season into a three-year contract.
By September 2005, with Renault, Alonso had become the sport’s youngest
World Champion to that date.
But now, after a return to Renault and five seasons with Ferrari, Alonso is back for a second stint with Ron Dennis and his team.
That’s because this man, fluent in English, French and Italian, as well as his native Spanish, holds no fear of going back to places that once held bad memories or merely belonged to the past. He left his roots in Spain, where his father Jose Luis (from whom Fernando learned some handy card tricks) worked in an explosives
factory and his mother in a department store. But he returned after paying an estimated AUD98 million-dollar tax bill.
Alonso’s fearless pragmatism and self-belief have seen him ignore conventional wisdom over and again. Who says he won’t defy the demons of the past, work with Button to develop a front-running relationship, and help McLaren-Honda back to the heady heights of yesteryear? A keen poker player, Alonso has calculated the odds – and he is more than ready for another throw of the dice.
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If you were a music buff the month began with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ at number one and ended with Roy Orbison releasing the enduringly popular ‘Pretty Woman’; if you were a sports fan, in the USA you could watch the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle at his home run-hitting best, in England you could see Freddie Trueman claim his 300th Test wicket while Aussie Rules fans were watching Melbourne on the way to their final Premiership to date.
There was a lot going on inAugust 1964
Opposite: 1964 German Grand Prix, Nürburgring. Honda take part in their first Grand Prix.
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Elsewhere storm clouds gathered on the international horizon when the destroyer USS Maddox engaged North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the
Gulf of Tonkin. That ominous event took place on August 2, 1964.
So did the arrival of a significant newcomer amid the sound and fury of a different battlefield: on that Sunday, in the idyllic setting of the Nürburgring high in the Eifel
Mountains in south-western Germany, Honda took part in its first Grand Prix.
The Japanese company had released its first sports car, the S500, only the
previous year. Now Soichiro Honda, true to his credo that racing improves the breed, was keen to throw his young engineers into a sporting contest, which at that time was dominated by the Europeans.
In that remarkable decade of the Sixties, by the end of 1963 Cooper (with the help of an Aussie called Brabham), Ferrari, BRM and Lotus had all claimed the Drivers’ World Championship and the Constructors’ crown as well.
By December of that year Honda was testing a prototype engine, the RA270E, which became the RA271E for the company’s Formula 1 debut in 1964. With Yoshio Nakamura leading the team, the driver was a 28-year-old American named Ronnie Bucknum, who had no F1 experience of his own but had caught the eye of people following the American sports car racing scene.
The Honda was shaken down at Zandvoort in Holland before contesting its first World Championship event. The German Grand Prix was round six of 10 in 1964, with an Englishman by the name of John Surtees on his way to the world title with Ferrari.
Honda had to seek an additional Saturday afternoon session to ensure that the car could overcome its teething troubles and allow Bucknum to complete the requisite five laps to qualify for Sunday’s race, due to be run over 15 laps of the daunting
22.81-kilometre circuit known as ‘The Green Hell’. The California driver had a late-race spin but was classified 13th, albeit four laps down and not running at the finish.
Honda contested two more races that year, at Monza in Italy and Watkins Glen in the United States, but the luckless Bucknum retired from both. Honda expected more in 1965...
tHe fIrst red Letter dayFor 1965 Honda not only had the experience of 1964 to call upon, it also had the experience of its second driver. Richie Ginther came in alongside his compatriot Bucknum as they got to grips with the RA272.
Ginther was 34 and already had 39 Grand Prix starts under his belt. He had visited the F1 podium 13 times and enjoyed the reputation of an excellent test and development driver. In short, he was perfect for Honda’s purposes at the time.
On track there was good and not-so-good news. Not so good: with RA272 proved rather fragile, with a string of retirements linked to areas such as gearbox and ignition. Good: despite this, within two races Ginther had secured Honda’s first World Championship point, taking sixth place in Honda’s fifth Grand Prix staged at the magnificent Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium; he repeated that achievement at Zandvoort. But the best of 1965 was yet to come.
1965 Mexican Grand Prix, Mexico City. Richie Ginther, Honda, 1st position, celebrates with chief mechanic Yoshio Nakamura.
Mexico City was, after Monaco, F1’s most exotic staging-post in the Sixties. On October 24 Ginther drove his RA272 to Honda’s first Grand Prix victory. It was a maiden win, too, for the American and for tyre supplier Goodyear, and it was made all the sweeter by Bucknum’s finishing fifth. These were the only World Championship points the pioneering Bucknum scored in 11 races with Honda.
Year two had seen Honda finish sixth in the Constructors’ World Championship with 11 points. Lotus took the title with 54, ahead of BRM on 45: clearly there was work still to be done.
On October 24, Ginther drove his RA272 to Honda’s first Grand Prix victory.
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tHe return to PoWer: 1966 and aLL tHatHonda’s first success, in only its 11th Grand Prix, came in the final race of the 1.5-litre era. For 1966 and beyond, Grand Prix racing faced the ‘Return to Power’ with a new 3-litre formula coming into force. Would the newly successful Japanese company be up to the challenge?
Striving to get the RA273 ready for the fray, Honda contested only three rounds of the 1966 World Championship with Ginther and Bucknum. Ginther also enjoyed one-off drives with Cooper in Monaco and Belgium.
Like many of us, the RA273 had a weight problem. The ‘Return to Power’ saw Honda develop a longer engine, abandoning the transverse mounting and with its exhausts packed into the centre of its 90-degree vee. It could deliver over 400 bhp, but Honda over-reacted to concerns about the loadings being put through the car and made a chassis that was punitively heavy – 650 kilos overall, when the minimum weight required was a mere 500.
Of the three rounds contested, Mexico City was again the most rewarding. Ginther qualified third, finished fourth and collected another of the little statistical trophies F1 followers enjoy so much – Honda’s first fastest race lap. But three points and seventh place in the Constructors’ standings were not the return Honda sought on its investment.
For 1967 the company called in the cavalry, which in this case took the shape of 1964 World Champion John Surtees and race-car manufacturer Lola, with whom the English ace had close contacts. Surtees started as he meant to go on, collecting a podium for third place in the ‘old’ R272 in South Africa on his Honda debut.
Introduced in mid-season, the RA300, with an engine developing 420 bhp, was mated to
a chassis on which Eric Broadley’s Lola designers did most of the initial work with input from Surtees himself. Overall the car shed around 40 kilos – and it paid off.
The RA300’s debut came at Monza on September 10. It was Honda’s 21st Grand Prix, and it brought the company’s second World Championship race win. With five points-scoring finishes from its nine races in 1967 Honda scored 20 points and finished fourth overall, as did the driver who scored them.
Sadly the expectations raised by Surtees’ arrival and the race-winning speed of the RA300 did not bear fruit. Honda built two new Grand Prix machines, the RA301 and the RA302, which was introduced in the French Grand Prix in early July. It was a landmark in Honda’s racing history, but for the saddest of reasons.
While Surtees in the RA301 took second place, Jo Schlesser, drafted in to give the new RA302 its debut, lost control at the Rouen circuit’s Nouveau Monde hairpin, crashed and perished in the burning wreckage.
Surtees claimed Honda’s first coveted pole position at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, but third at Watkins Glen was his final visit to the podium for the team. Finishing sixth overall with just 14 points persuaded Mr Honda to refocus his engineers’ talents on building road cars instead.
In all the ‘first era’ saw Honda contest 35 Grands Prix, winning two, taking one pole position and two fastest race laps. The statistics would be considerably more seductive when the company returned to supply engines to front-running teams in the Eighties...
The RA300’s debut came at Monza on September 10.
It was Honda’s 21st Grand Prix, and it brought the company’s second World Championship
race win.
1967 Italian Grand Prix, Monza. John Surtees, Honda RA300, 1st position.
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tHe quIet aMerIcanRichie Ginther began his career in Formula 1 in 1960 as teammate to his compatriot Phil Hill at Ferrari, finishing second in only his third start for the famous Scuderia. While Hill went on to become America’s first F1 World Champion the following year, Ginther was fifth overall and the exit beckoned.
In three seasons with BRM he played second fiddle to another World Champion in Graham Hill, finished runner-up to the great Jim Clark of Lotus and then finished fifth in 1964. With BRM intent on signing rising Scot Jackie Stewart, Ginther was delighted to be offered the chance of making Honda a force in Formula 1.
His greatest day came at the end of his first season in the Japanese car. Mexico City’s altitude presented a specific challenge because of the lack of atmospheric pressure. Chief Engineer Nakamura balanced the fuel mixture perfectly with the thin air to make his two American drivers quick from the start of the weekend.
Starting from the outside of the second row, Ginther raced straight into the lead, carefully asked for only 11,000 of the 12,000 revs available to him, just as carefully kept an eye on Dan Gurney’s Brabham and won by 2.8 seconds.
Richie Ginther took part in 52 Grands Prix but Honda provided his lone victory. He never again reached the heights of Mexico City, so to speak, and contested only five more F1 races. Abandoning the alleged glamour of the F1 paddock he toured the south-western USA and Mexico, aptly enough. He died of heart failure in 1989.
1965 Mexican Grand Prix, Mexico City. Richie Ginther, Honda, 1st position.
tHe engLIsH aLL-rounderJohn Surtees was a seasoned 33-year-old with 58 Grands Prix and several world titles under his belt when he teamed up with Honda in 1967. Eight of them, to be exact – but like Honda, his reputation was forged in the world of two-wheeled racing.
No fewer than seven of those titles had come on two wheels in 350cc and 500cc road racing in the Fifties before he swapped his saddle for a Grand Prix cockpit.
Making his F1 debut in Monaco for Lotus in 1960, Surtees also went on to race for Cooper, Lola and Ferrari, scoring the first of his six victories in Germany in 1963 for the famous Italian marque. He then became the first man ever to win World Championships on two and four wheels, taking the title in 1964 with victories in Germany and Italy to pip Graham Hill of BRM by a single point.
Surtees worked long and hard at a small base in Slough, England, to help Honda develop a V12 response to the emerging force of the V8 Ford-Cosworth DFV. In all he would contest 21 World Championship races in Honda cars, winning one and finishing in the points eight times.
At Monza on September 10, 1967, where he had won in a Ferrari three years and one day before, John Surtees started from ninth on the grid for the 78 lap Italian Grand Prix. For much of the race he fought tigerishly with Chris Amon, Bruce McLaren and Jochen Rindt over fourth place.
But retirements up front and among his group saw Surtees duelling with Jack Brabham for the lead on the final lap. The Australian had it won as they entered the final bend, the famous Parabolica – but the Brabham ran wide, Surtees pounced and victory was his by just two-tenths of a second. It was Honda’s second F1 victory and the sixth and last of John Surtees’ extraordinary career.
1968 British Grand Prix. John Surtees, Honda RA301, 5th position.
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Power behind the throne
1992 Australian Grand Prix, Adelaide. Gerhard Berger (McLaren MP4/7A Honda) 1st position.
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April 10, 1983 was a historic day for Formula 1, for two reasons. On that date the ‘Race of Champions’ was staged at Brands Hatch in Kent. It was the last non-World Championship F1 race ever to take place.
It was also the day Honda entered the new F1 turbo era, supplying the engine that powered the Spirit entry, the #40 car driven by Sweden’s Stefan Johansson.
As is so often the case with new cars, Johansson was quick – second-fastest in free practice – but plauged by teething troubles. He qualified 12th and had progressed to eighth within four laps before being sidelined.
The race was won by another Scandinavian, Keke Rosberg, in a Williams. Spirit’s involvement in Grand Prix racing began with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone; ironically it ended five races later back at Brands Hatch, this time for the European Grand Prix.
But by the end of that year’s World Championship Rosberg too would be powered by Honda – and this time it was the start of something much more long-lasting.
Honda by now had become established as a force in global automotive production with the Civic and Accord leading the way. A new generation of engineers was waiting in the wings, and Grand Prix racing would again be the intensely competitive environment in which they would thrive.
While there had been no change to F1 engine regulations, by then turbo-charged engines were starting to exercise dominance over normally-aspirated units with twice their capacity. For 1984 the opposition would include TAG Porsche, Ferrari, Renault – who began the turbo era at the British Grand Prix in 1977 – and BMW. Could Honda compete?
WILLIaMs-Honda WorLd cHaMPIonsThe first Williams-Honda, FW09, appeared at the final round of the 1983 season at Kyalami in South Africa. Rosberg qualified sixth and finished one place higher. By the halfway point of the partnership’s first full season, 1984, Rosberg was a race-winner. It came at Dallas, in the USA, Keke proudly sporting a ten-gallon hat to acknowledge his achievement. It was just the beginning…
Rosberg conquered the States again in 1985, this time in the motor city itself, Detroit. Three straight victories to close the season, shared between the Finn and his UK teammate Nigel Mansell, were the springboard to two more years of outstanding success.
Mansell and his new Williams partner, Nelson Piquet, fought tooth and nail for victories in 1986, taking nine between them
– but also allowing McLaren’s French ace Alain Prost to nip in and steal the Drivers’ World Championship at the final round in Adelaide. Williams-Honda, though, were Constructors’ World Champions together.
In 1987 Piquet added the Drivers’ crown as the team again dominated: nine more victories, the Brazilian was World Champion and Mansell runner-up, and a second straight Constructors’ crown.
In their time together Williams and Honda achieved 23 Grand Prix victories, 19 pole positions and 22 fastest race laps. In 1987 and 1988 Lotus also used Honda power to achieve two wins for Ayrton Senna, one pole and three fastest laps.
aMazIngLy enougH, tHe Best Was yet to coMe…
1985 British Grand Prix, Silverstone, England. Keke Rosberg (Williams FW10 Honda) who’s pole position time was the fastest ever qualifying lap.
1987 Jerez, Spain. Nigel Mansell (Williams FW11B Honda) and Michele Alboreto (Ferrari F187) wait in the pits.
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tHe dreaM teaM: tHe fIrst McLaren-Honda PartnersHIP, 1988-92For 1988 McLaren and Honda had perhaps the strongest driver pairing ever seen in Formula 1. It brought together two men who already had connections to the new partnership: Prost, a proven race-winner for McLaren and by then a double World Champion, and Senna, the brilliant Brazilian who had won with Honda power while a Lotus driver.
The media called it the Dream Team; Managing Director Ron Dennis referred to “gladiatorial competitiveness”. While the two drivers eventually became bitter rivals as each pursued his own title ambitions, for two seasons the Prost-Senna pairing enjoyed success that was indeed the stuff of dreams.
In their first year together the pair completed perhaps the most dominant season ever seen. In 1988 McLaren-Honda won 15 of the 16 World Championship races. A clean sweep was denied them only when Senna’s car was taken out by F1 newcomer Jean-Louis Schlesser, a one-race stand-in for Nigel Mansell, with one lap of the Italian Grand Prix to go and Senna in the lead.
On his way to the title Senna set a new F1 record of 13 pole positions in a single season. He also set a new record of eight victories in a single season, and Prost was only one win behind. McLaren-Honda achieved a record 10 1-2 finishes; 12 times Senna and Prost locked out the front row; their Championship-winning total of 199 points was also a new record.
1988 Hungaroring, Budapest, Hungary. Ayrton Senna (McLaren MP4/4 Honda) followed by Nigel Mansell and Riccardo Patrese (both
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Designed by Steve Nichols, the MP4-4, complete with Honda’s RA168E V6 turbo-charged engine, was perhaps the single most successful Grand Prix car of all time. What is more remarkable is that the team achieved these unprecedented successes in the final year of turbo power.
Boost pressure had been restricted; fuel consumption was set at a miserly 150 litres. Then, as now, the key to winning was the ability to match high power to low fuel consumption. And, as Ron Dennis concluded, it all seemed perfectly logical. “To Honda,” he observed,
“winning is what they came to do...”
The figures were almost as startling in 1989, despite the switch to normally-aspirated V10 engines. Senna matched his record tally of 13 poles; he and Prost recorded 10 Grand Prix victories between them.
But this time it was ‘The Professor’, as the shrewd little Frenchman was known, who beat the dazzling Latin-American to the crown. Their rivalry had intensified to a peak that Prost could no longer tolerate and for 1990 Ayrton had a new teammate.
He was Austrian Gerhard Berger, who arrived at McLaren-Honda with five Grand Prix wins on his résumé, for Benetton and Ferrari. Seven podiums in his first season
with the team helped McLaren-Honda win a third straight Constructors’ World Championship, but Berger was always in Senna’s shadow. The Brazilian took his
second title with another 10 pole positons and six race wins.
1988 Adelaide, Australia. Last race for the Honda V6 Turbo.
In 1991, propelled by Honda’s V12 engines, Berger posted his first McLaren-Honda. Fittingly enough it came from pole position in Japan, the penultimate round of the season. By then a third title was in Senna’s keeping: seven more race wins helped McLaren-Honda retain the Constructors’ crown as well.
The final year of this epic partnership was 1992 – and it was the least successful season of the McLaren-Honda era.
Senna managed ‘only’ three Grand Prix victories, Berger two; they finished fourth and fifth respectively.
In 80 races together McLaren-Honda won 44; they were on pole 53 times; they set 30 fastest race laps. Eight World Championships, four each for Drivers and Constructors, were the staggering reward in four straight seasons. Will we ever see their like again?
1988 Silverstone, England. Alain Prost (McLaren MP4/4-Honda).
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Just because Honda loves racing
2006 Chinese Grand Prix, Shanghai, China. Rubens Barrichello, Honda RA106; Michael Schumacher, Ferrari 248 F1.46
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Simple questions demand simple answers. Takefumi Hosaka was quick to supply one. Asked why Honda was returning to Formula 1 at the dawn of the 21st century, the Project Leader said: “Just because Honda loves racing.”
In the early years of the century Honda returned to its role from 1983-92: that of engine supplier to a pre-existing racing team. In this case it was BAR, the phoenix which rose in 1999 from the ashes of the once-great Tyrrell team.
The project was driven by Craig Pollock, who had astutely managed the career of Jacques Villeneuve all the way to the Drivers’ World Championship with Williams in 1997. Their gleaming Brackley headquarters was in stark contrast to the days of Ken Tyrrell’s team and its original woodyard base.
In collaboration with Adrian Reynard, a respected figure in F3000 and IndyCar construction, BAR made their F1 entry in 1999 with Villeneuve as one of their drivers – and failed to score a single point.
The arrival of Honda’s RA100E V10 engines for 2000 had an immediate impact. Villeneuve was fourth in the opening round here in Australia and teammate Ricardo Zonta sixth. That would be their best result in a season that yielded seven points-scoring finishes for the French-Canadian and three for his Brazilian teammate. BAR-Honda finished equal fourth in the Constructors’ World Championship.
The partnership would endure for another five seasons – but it also endured some difficult days. Villeneuve achieved the team’s first podium finishes in Spain and Germany in 2001 but they slipped to sixth, a position they repeated in 2002.
Jenson Button arrived in 2003 and scored 17 points on his way to ninth overall as BAR-Honda finished fifth, but 2004 was a season of real promise. Button scored points on 15 occasions, with two second places and three thirds en route to third place in the drivers’ standings. Takuma Sato backed up manfully to finish eighth and BAR-Honda ended the year as runners-up to the all-conquering Ferraris.
The promise was not to be fulfilled, but a strong finish to the 2005 season by Button – scoring points in each of the last 10 races – persuaded Honda that it was time to take matters into their own hands. After six seasons with BAR, and a brief partnership with Jordan (2001-02), Honda was a Formula 1 constructor again.
2006 Brazilian Grand Prix, Interlagos, São Paulo, Brazil.
Giancarlo Fisichella, Renault R26; Rubens Barrichello, Honda RA106;
Michael Schumacher, Ferrari 248 F1.
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on tHe Button: tHe HIgH-PoInt of tHe tHIrd era
“If my voice sounds funny it’s because I’ve been screaming so much.”
Jenson Button was almost apologetic as he faced the world’s racing media in Hungary on the first Sunday of August 2006. Hoarseness was a small price to pay for the finest moment of the popular Englishman’s racing life to that point.
Button was then 26; he had already contested 113 Grands Prix. He had visited the podium several times with the Honda-powered BAR team in 2004 and 2005, but never stood on the top step.
That all changed at the Hungaroring in 2006.
The F1 landscape to which Honda returned as a constructor in its own right in that year was much changed from the one it had left in 1968. In between times, of course, Honda had forged an awesome reputation as the supplier of World Championship-winning engines to Williams and, especially, McLaren.
The Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir on March 12, 2006 was the dawn of Honda’s third era in the sport as a constructor.
The men chosen to drive the V8-engined RA106 were Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. It was perhaps the most seasoned line-up on the 22-car grid of that initial year, but even that outstanding Anglo-Brazilian partnership struggled to wring results from the first new Honda.
Button’s third place in Malaysia, followed by pole position in Australia, proved a false dawn, with an alarming mid-season period from the British round to the German where retirements and no-scores were the order of the day.
And then came Hungary...
By that time Shuhei Nakamoto had taken over the team’s technical direction. New emphasis was put on development, which had been allowed to slide as major items like a new wind tunnel were put in place, and the results spoke for themselves.
Jenson qualified fourth for the Hungarian Grand Prix on August 6 but started from 14th after being penalised for an engine change on Saturday. He and Rubens were going along nicely enough, but it all got better with a Safety Car on the 26th lap.
The experienced Button nipped through for second place behind Renault’s World Champion Fernando Alonso. The Honda made its second pit stop on lap 46 – five laps before the Spaniard – and had the gap down to mere fractions of a second. When Alonso’s right rear wheel-nut came off and he spun off after his second stop, the race was Jenson’s.
“We were a real thinking team today,” beamed the first-time winner. “We thought hard about our strategy and we won, not just because we had speed but also because we had the strategy. The last lap felt amazing. In fact, over the last ten I didn’t want the race to end...”
In a nice echo of Honda’s first Grand Prix win back in 1965, when Ronnie Bucknum backed up team leader and race winner Richie Ginther with fifth place, Barrichello also backed up with a fine fourth place of his own.
2008 Interlagos, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Jenson Button, Honda RA108.
From there to the end of the season Button scored more points than any other driver. Small wonder, then, that confidence was high as the team went into the winter break. Sadly, it proved unfounded: RA107 and its successor, RA108, were hamstrung by aerodynamic inadequacies and failed to deliver another victory – in fact Barrichello’s third place in the British Grand Prix of 2008 was their only other podium.
In November of that year, as the GFC began to bite, Honda pulled out of F1. Ironically, team principal Ross Brawn effected a management buy-out, retained Button and Barrichello, and the pair finished one-two in the first race of 2009 in Australia.
Brawn had been laying the foundations throughout 2008. By the time he built his F1 house, Honda were no longer its owners…
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“It’s great to be on the inside at last, rather than sitting in the stands!” The speaker is Yasuhisa Arai, one of the key people entrusted with the task of making Honda and McLaren a successful force once more. What Arai-san knows better than most is that the world has changed a great deal, and Formula 1 with it, since these two giants last worked together...
20 years of grand PrIx racIng In MeLBourneAs it turns 20 in 2015, the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne can reflect on a job well done. The Albert Park circuit, radically overhauled since its earliest staging of the Australian GP as a non-Championship event in the Fifties, now holds its own as a modern, permanent circuit with many great resources to draw on.
The F1 world in 2015
With two exceptions, Melbourne has been the opening race of each F1 season and that proviso is now built into a contract renewed through to the year 2020.
In those two decades Melbourne, taking the Australian round over from its highly popular first location in Adelaide, has established itself as one of the most popular staging-posts on Formula 1’s hectic annual gallop around the globe.
The first winner at Albert Park was Damon Hill – taking back-to-back Australian victories in 1996 after winning the final race in Adelaide the previous year.
Damon, son of two-time title-winner Graham Hill, was the first in a long list of Melbourne winners who went on to become World Champions in the same year: Mika Häkkinen, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel.
In their first partnership McLaren and Honda enjoyed conspicuous success in South Australia: four pole positions together, two fastest race laps and three victories for the three drivers who were the stalwarts of that first partnership – Alain Prost in 1988, Ayrton Senna (1991) and Gerhard Berger (1992).
Each of the two partners has enjoyed separate success in Melbourne too. For Honda in its third F1 era, Jenson Button claimed pole position in 2006. For McLaren there have been six victories in the Victorian capital to date as well as five pole positions.
Bridging the gap are the two drivers now charged with steering McLaren-Honda back to the top. Fernando Alonso is already a Melbourne winner, back in 2006; Jenson Button, remarkably, has
three Melbourne victories on his CV. The first was for the team that morphed out of Honda’s third F1 era, Brawn GP, in 2009, the other two for McLaren in 2010 and 2012.
The passing years have seen F1 tightening its belt: restrictions on engine size, from the three-litre formula in force until 2003, the 2.4-litre era and, starting in 2014, the radical new hybrid power systems that reflect world car makers’ desire to achieve ever-higher stands on performance on ever-diminishing quantities of fuel.
tHe season aHead: a deveLoPIng WorLdMcLaren and Honda, embarking on a new journey together, will travel to no fewer than 20 Grand Prix destinations in 2015. The expansion of the F1 calendar is perhaps the single most obvious difference between the F1 world in 2015 and the world the partners knew when their first collaboration ended in 1992.
Of the 20 races scheduled for 2015, no fewer than 12 – 60 per cent – are so-called ‘fly-aways’, races calling for long-haul flights outside of the sport’s historical and geographical homeland in western Europe. Exotic locations like Malaysia, China, Bahrain, Singapore, Russia and Abu Dhabi have never seen McLaren-Honda in action together.
The people working together will also be far more numerous than before. While there are restrictions on the number of personnel allowed to be trackside over each Grand Prix weekend, some 60 operational staff working more or less directly on the two cars will be backed up by a substantial number of ancillary personnel in media, marketing and hospitality.
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As far as the McLaren-Honda MP4-30 is concerned, the keyword will be ‘development’. Every new F1 car is like a new-born thoroughbred racehorse: its first steps, its growth and its potential are closely monitored from the moment it first sees the light of day.
For the MP4-30, that moment came at Jerez, in south-western Spain, on a cool Sunday morning – the first day of February 2015. While the amount of testing Grand Prix teams may carry out has also been severely curtailed, the pre-season tests are traditionally a chance to see the new cars for the first time and to speculate on who will be front-runners by the time they reach Melbourne.
It would be only fair to say that the new car’s birth was a difficult one: the four-day test in the first week of February saw limited running as the two sets of engineers wrestled with teething problems. But the feeling emanating from the camp was positive.
“It is a foundation,” said McLaren, “offering up new exploratory development paths for our engineers, aerodynamicists and drivers to pursue during the season, and on into next year.
“Honda will provide the know-how, the expertise and the muscle to make rapid progress – and to keep pushing development on all fronts during the season. The partnership will be a work in progress, but it will only strengthen over time.”
Fernando Alonso was the man entrusted with the car’s first appearance on track.
“It’s been a fantastic day for me,” said the Spanish star. “To have the privilege to drive the car for the first time – for the comeback of McLaren and Honda after 23 years – makes me feel extremely proud.”
Alonso was also quick to strike an optimistic note. “We have a lot still to learn,” he conceded, “but let’s not forget how tough it was for a lot of teams last year. It’ll be no different for us. Every lap we do we learn something, so hopefully we’ll arrive in Australia with a good understanding of the car.” 2015 F1 Pre Season Test,
Circuito de Jerez, Jerez, Spain.
McLaren’s motor sport director Éric Boullier underlined the point. “What’s particularly encouraging,” he said, “is the way that McLaren’s and Honda’s engineers are already working so well together – collaborating seamlessly in their shared ambition to nail a revolutionary new car’s inevitable developmental gremlins as soon as possible.”
Last but not least, the man who has previous experience of both McLaren and Honda as separate entities summed up the atmosphere in the renewed partnership. “There’s a very positive atmosphere about the place,” insisted Jenson Button. “The team isn’t McLaren and Honda, it’s McLaren-Honda. It’s everyone together.”
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Formula 1 represents the pinnacle of automobile engineering and technological advancement. It is often referred to as “the toughest automotive testing ground on the planet”. Honda, the world’s largest engine manufacturer is excited to return to the sport that has spawned some of its greatest automotive achievements – such as the NSX (but more on this later).
To celebrate their return to Formula 1, Honda has created the Power Room at the 2015 Formula 1® Rolex Australian Grand Prix – an exhibition commemorating their successes on and off the track. Take a trip down memory lane, from the illustrious F1 history dating back to the 60s, through the powerful McLaren-Honda partnership in the 80s, to their final performances before exiting Formula 1. A special inclusion to the exhibit is the Honda F1 memorabilia that harks back to the famed drivers of Aryton Senna and Alain Prost. On display are driver gloves, engine parts from the championship winning MP4/4 and a historic driver’s helmet.
The Power Room also houses the impressive evolution of the sports car – the Honda NSX Concept. This is the centre-piece of the Power Room – a rebirth of an icon that represents the ultimate combination of power, performance, technology and sportiness.
NSX – Honda’s return to power
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Dubbed the ‘new sports experience’, it was developed under the concept of a ‘human-centered supercar’ – a car that puts the driver first in every aspect of its design. The next generation NSX will leverage its state-of-the-art hybrid supercar power unit, body and chassis to deliver an exceptionally intuitive, and confidence-inspiring response “at the will of the driver”.
Honda engineers leveraged the company’s expertise both with high-performance engine and hybrid electric-drive technologies, as well as its two decades of experience with industry-leading dynamic torque-vectoring technologies, including Super-Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD), to create the most sophisticated, technologically advanced and intelligent powertrain in the supercar universe.
At the heart of the NSX’s performance capabilities is an all-new mid-mounted, 75-degree, DOHC V6 engine with twin turbochargers mated to an Acura-developed 9-speed DCT. The V6 engine employs a race-inspired compact valve train and dry sump lubrication system to help lower the center of gravity. The all-new 9-speed DCT delivers synapse-quick gear changes and rev-matching downshifts. The rear direct-drive electric motor, housed between the engine and transmission, supports acceleration, braking and transmission shifting performance. The NSX’s front wheels are driven by twin independent high-output electric motors, which deliver instantaneous torque response and dynamic left-to-right torque distribution.
The NSX uses its front electric motors for dynamic torque vectoring in addition to enhancing acceleration and braking
performance. The result is an instantaneous “zero delay” launch performance and handling response that seems to anticipate the driver’s desire. The NSX has undergone extensive testing at some of the world’s most challenging race circuits, including the famed Nürburgring.
Also in keeping with the legacy of NSX – the world’s first all-aluminum supercar – the new NSX features an innovative new multi-material body design with world-first material applications and construction processes.
This is the only NSX on display in the country and your only chance to be in the presence of automotive greatness. Come see it up close and personal in Honda’s on-circuit display at the 2015 Formula 1® Rolex Australian Grand Prix, Legends Lane, March 12-15. Don’t miss this one-off opportunity.
Honda f1 fLasH BackAyrton Senna was in Japan testing his Honda-powered McLaren in February 1989, so his test of the NSX was almost a spur-of-the-moment event. When he now famously said, “I’m not sure I can really give you appropriate advice on a mass-production car, but I feel it’s a little fragile.”
The Honda R&D department regrouped at one of the first dedicated Japanese testing facilities at the Nürburgring. Honda engineers managed to increase the chassis stiffness of the NSX by 50 per cent after Senna’s comments, and his further input helped create an even more balanced machine.
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This year, Honda is just as exciting off the trackFor Honda, 2015 is not just about our return to Formula 1. There are many exciting developments happening off the track as well, including the release of our ultimate compact SUV – the all-new Honda HR-V.
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^ VTi-S and above. #VTi-S and above. VTi-L features 17-inch alloy sports wheel design.
*VTi-L and above.
Every great adventurer needs to have a co-conspirator. Whether you’re going for brunch in town or a beach far from it, the Honda HR-V is ready, willing and able. It’s an SUV on a compact scale. Nimble like a hatchback, and thrilling like a coupé, you’ll find clever thinking everywhere you look.
Under the hood lies a 1.8-litre i-VTEC petrol engine – perfectly proportioned for this new generation of compact SUV. But don’t let size fool you. There’s room for those who live big.
We can’t spare you from having to load up the luggage for your next adventure, but we can make it less difficult. With an astonishingly low, extra-wide tailgate, it’s never been easier to pack it all in.
Awkward items like golf clubs slide in and out with ease. While discreet compartments let you hide your most prized possessions. But the real secret to the HR-V’s miraculous use of space lies in the seats themselves. With 18 possible seating configurations, there is no cargo too tricky for its Magic Seats with their many versatile modes.
Speaking of clever ideas, the 7-inch Display Audio system is your new favourite front seat passenger – there to keep the beat going and connect you to the world outside.
As a screen for the multi-angle reversing camera, it can also help you manoeuvre safely. Intelligent advancements like City Brake Active System and Lane Watch have made their way into the VTi-S model and above, as well as the optional Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) in the VTi-L.
With a dynamic stance that gives rise to a sleek upper body, the HR-V cuts a surprisingly chiselled profile for a car of its size. Strong, sculptural lines evoke sports car as much as SUV.
But SUV is in its DNA. The driver is positioned high on the road for superior visibility, while details like the front fog lights ,̂ 17-inch alloy wheels#, shark fin antenna and tailgate spoiler command attention.
Like a moth to a flame, you’ll feel the allure of the beautifully designed LED lighting system. Turn indicators have been imaginatively integrated into the door mirrors, while the taillights emit a futuristic glow. On the VTi-S and above, the lighting is reinvented again with charismatic LED Daytime Running Lights (DRL), LED auto-levelling headlights, and optical guide LED taillights that look smart but are also an ingenious new safety feature.
Everything about the HR-V shouts adventure. From its cleverly concealed rear door handles (hint: they’re behind the window), to the sporty black grille and trim, to the roof rails that come standard on the VTi-S and above, it’s clear there’s even more to this car than initially meets the eye.
Finally, the world revolves around you. Introducing the electric panoramic sunroof* – a window to bring you and your passengers closer to nature. It’s all made possible by a design that puts people first, surrounding the occupants with a gorgeous 360 degree view of the sky above. The glass is tinted to control cabin light and can be retracted just like a normal sunroof to let the summer sun shine in.
That’s right, the Honda HR-V is no ordinary car. Think of it as a new friend. A friend that’s going places.
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1964
Red letter days Honda as constructor
August 2, 1964 First race
Ronnie Bucknum drives the Honda RA271 in the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring
October 24, 1965
First victoryGinther wins the Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City, with Bucknum fifth
June 13, 1965 First World Championship point
Richie Ginther finishes sixth at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium
October 23, 1966 First fastest lap
Ginther, Mexico City
2006
September 10, 1967
Second victoryJohn Surtees wins the Italian Grand Prix at Monza April 1, 2006
Second pole position
Jenson Button qualifies fastest for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne
September 7, 1968 First pole position
Surtees qualifies fastest for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza
August 6, 2006
Third victoryJenson Button wins the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest
1964-6835 Grands Prix
2006-0853 Grands Prix
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1983
Glory days Honda as engine supplier
WILLIAMS 65 Grands Prix
Pole positions: 19
Keke Rosberg 2
Nelson Piquet 6
Nigel Mansell 11
First pole: July 6, 1985, Rosberg, French Grand Prix, Le Castellet
Fastest Laps: 22
Rosberg 3
Piquet 11
Mansell 8
First fastest lap: July 7, 1985, Rosberg, French Grand Prix, Le Castellet
Victories: 23
Rosberg 3
Piquet 7
Mansell 13
First victory: July 8, 1984, Rosberg, US Grand Prix, Dallas
Drivers’ World Championships: 1
Piquet, 1987
Constructors’ World Championships: 2
1986-1987
1987Mansell 1988
LOTUS 32 Grands Prix
Pole positions: 1
First pole: May 2, 1987, Ayrton Senna, San Marino Grand Prix, Imola
Fastest Laps: 3 (all to Senna)
First fastest lap: May 31, 1987, Senna, Monaco Grand Prix, Monte Carlo
Victories: 2 (both to Senna)
First victory: May 31, 1987, Senna, Monaco Grand Prix, Monte Carlo
1987Senna
6766 67
1988
Pole positions: 53
Ayrton Senna 45
Alain Prost 4
Gerhard Berger 4
First pole: April 2, 1988, Senna, Brazilian Grand Prix, Rio de Janeiro
Fastest Laps: 30
Prost 12
Senna 11
Berger 7
First fastest lap: May 1, 1988, Prost, San Marino Grand Prix, Imola
Victories: 44
Senna 30
Prost 11
Berger 3
First victory: April 3, 1988, Prost, Brazilian Grand Prix, Rio de Janeiro
Drivers’ World Championships: 4
Senna, 1988-90-91
Prost 1989
Constructors’ World Championships: 4
1988-89-90-91
1992Senna
McLAREN 80 Grands Prix
Honda also supplied Formula 1 engines to the following teams:
Spirit (6 races 1983)
Tyrrell (16 races, 1991)
BAR (101 races, 2000-05)
Jordan (34 races, 2001-02)
Super Aguri (39 races, 2006-08)
In all, Honda has contested 340 World Championship Grands Prix:
As constructor: 88
As engine supplier: 252
2006 Brazilian Grand Prix, Interlagos, Sao Paulo. Franck Montagny, Super Aguri SA06-Honda.
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Polepole restaurant-bar
Off track & on trend in Melbourne
So you think you know Melbourne? Step off track and race ahead of the pack with this round-up of
what’s hot and sparkling new in the city that loves to shop, eat, drink coffee and play around.
L’Hotel Gitan
L’Hotel Gitan
Polepole
Polepole
Polepole
FoodMany new kids on the Melbourne food scene already have an impeccable pedigree, including Gradi Pizzeria, now on Crown’s Riverwalk. Step in and discover the pizza that won chef Johnny Di Francesco best margherita pizza at the Pizza World Championship in Italy (Southbank, 400gradi.com.au). In the city, the tagline for Polepole restaurant-bar is ‘booze, ribs, beats’. Climb the stairs for an East African beer and seriously good ribs and non-ribs (267 Little Collins St, polepolebar.com.au). Time Out is the first café you’ll spy in Melbourne’s prime meeting place, Federation Square, opposite Flinders Street Station. Recently renovated, it’s the place to grab a morning heartstarter by Brunswick coffee roaster Code Black (Fed Square timeoutfedsquare.com.au). L’Hotel Gitan is as cool as its name suggests, a local pub made over with casual French fare and Art Deco flair. Be seen over a glass of sparkling and plate of oysters (32 Commercial Rd, Prahran, lhotelgitan.com.au).
Close to the track, St Kilda never switches off. The top end of Acland St, away from the main drag, is where all the new action is, in a swathe of sparkling new restaurants. Plug the street numbers 56-72 Acland St into your GPS and hit Lona for Barcelona-inspired pintxos and mojitos (hot tip, order the Flinders Island lamb ribs), Buena Vista Peruvian Kitchen for lime-cured snapper ceviche, The Nelson rum bar with its sheltered terrace, and smoke-it-up shisha pipes with tasty mezze at 40 Thieves & Co. Finish up with a taste of Melbourne cheese, a coffee-seasoned pressato, from La Formaggeria micro cheese lab, on the corner of this hip little strip.
The Grand Prix coincides with the tail end of the extravagant Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. Check its website for last minute events, from cocktail mixing to slicing and dicing a whole suckling pig. Many are free, all are delicious (melbournefoodandwine.com.au).
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Nothing gets you back on track after a big night better than a burger: fat patties, squishy buns, a slew of slaw and, if you’re feeling patriotic, a slab of beetroot. But this is foodie Melbourne, so even the burgers are an epicurean epic. These three are the hottest burger joints in town right now:
The Grand Trailer Park Taverna The CB1 (cheeseburger with one patty) is a one-hander for the mildly peckish, but hey, they’ll stack it with a dozen patties if you ask nicely. The experience ain’t over till you’ve downed a salted caramel milkshake, with Makers’ Mark bourbon and a slice of maple bacon. Park in one of the caravans or out on the balcony.
87 Bourke St, Melbourne, grandtrailerpark.com.au
Meatmaiden Meatmaiden is serious about its meat: sure you can have a snapper burger with Kewpie mayo, but forget fish and go big with a beef cheek sloppy joe, with Swiss cheese and crisp gherkins.
Basement, 195 Little Collins St, Melbourne, meatmaiden.com.au
Mr Burger Let the burger come to you with these acclaimed burger food trucks. The menu is simple: meat, extra meat, veg and chillis: top it off with trucker chips, which come with bacon, cheese and a special sauce (oooh!) If you’re not into chasing parked cars, there are also four stores, in the City, Fitzroy and South Yarra.
Track the trucks at mrburger.com.au
Battle of the burgers
All images this page are The Grand Trailer Park Taverna 75
Emporium
Photograph: Paul Philipson
Melbourne city’s shopping scene has been transformed with the opening of Emporium and The Strand Melbourne arcade, creating a new home for international brands including Japan’s street fashion chain Uniqlo and Muji for fine household kitch, Top Shop from the UK and New York’s Kate Spade. The top shelf names are well represented in this part of town, with London looker Paul Smith and Coach for seriously gorgeous leathergoods. The city is now also home to Australia’s first branch of Swedish fashion staple H&M, which recently opened in the GPO building next door, and Australia’s first standalone Dolce & Gabbana store, all wrapped around our own Myer and David Jones department stores, for a power block of shops between Bourke St Mall and Lonsdale St.
Melbourne manages to hold her own, with local designers Gorman and Scanlan Theodore also in Emporium. But step outside the big box and into the laneways to discover the little local finds that will have you in pole position in the fashion stakes. Your list should include Habbot shoes, designed in Melbourne by Annie Abbott and made in Italy (in The Strand and Royal Arcade, habbotstudios.com) and seek out Cathedral Arcade in the Nicholas Building for Clea Garrick’s bold prints in Limedrop or the sweetly precise Kuwaii by Brunswick designer Kristy Barber (37 Swanston St, City, limedrop.com.au, kuwaii.com.au). Refuel with a bite of rose-scented Turkish delight in new Chocomama, down the café-lined Degreaves St, then snap up your Melbourne souvenirs at The Melbourne Shop (8 Driver La, GPO Melbourne) or Melbournalia (5/50 Bourke St, Melbourne).
Shop
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Fancy a beer? Thought so: warm up with the Good Beer Week Gala Showcase on March 13-14 ahead of a week of brewery bliss, from March 16 (201 Napier St, Fitzroy, goodbeerweek.com.au).
A. Unknown An artist in the Woodville Engineering Styling Studio works on a post-war car proposal, in the background can be seen a blackboard tape outline of the 1942 still born Holden body for American chassis c.1943 Private collection, Melbourne.
B. General Motors Company, Detroit (manufacturer) United States est. 1908 GM HOLDEN LTD, Adelaide (coachbuilder) est. 1931 Pontiac all-enclosed coupe (Silver Streak) 1938 Body designed Hartley Chaplin and Tom Wylie Collection of Violet Cecil, Melbourne
All images on this page are of Shifting Gear: Design, Innovation and the Australian Car exhibition.
A
B
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Play
Immigration Museum, Scots Wha Hae! exhibition
Can’t get enough of cars? Shifting Gear: Design, Innovation and the Australian Car lines up 23 Aussie icons including the concept-only Holden Hurricane (1969), a two-seater sports Bolwell Nagari and the Chrysler Valiant Charger E49, the world’s fastest car when it was released in 1971 (Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Federation Square. Runs March 6 – July 12, $15 adults, ngv.vic.gov.au).
Sniff the sweat from Bon Scott’s leather jacket in the Scots Wha Hae! exhibition, a celebration of all things Scottish at the Immigration Museum (400 Flinders St, Melbourne
museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum) or see ANZAC Day and the battle of Gallipoli through the eyes of Turkish-Australian community at ‘Gelibolu’ art exhibition (No Vacancy Gallery, 34-40 Jane Bell Lane, Melbourne, no-vacancy.com.au).
If it’s a song and dance you’re after, the big guns are in town: Strictly Ballroom (Her Majesty’s Theatre, strictlyballroomthemusical.com) does a dance-off with Dirty Dancing (Princess Theatre, dirtydancingaustralia.com), while The Lion King continues to goes wild (Regent Theatre, lionking.com.au). For a spur-of-the-moment show, see what tickets are around on the day at Halftix (halftixmelbourne.com).
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Honda Australia Pty. Ltd. ACN 004 759 611 ABN 66 004 759 611
95 Sharps Road, Tullamarine, Victoria, 3043. Freecall 1800 804 954 honda.com.au/cars