F1-Blog

Honda is the longest supporting of the Japanese manufacturers.

Honda surprised the world when it entered it's first F1 race in 1963 with the RA271. This astounded everyone as it was only 1960 that Honda produced it's first road car.

The grid was traditionally European dominated and the Japanese manufacturer surprised the world by not only using a Honda engine, but also building the chassis as well. In fact the only part of the team that was not Japanese was the two American drivers Ronnie Bucknum and Richie Ginther.

It did not take the Honda team long to prove that they belonged in the sport, as in the second year of racing the Honda team and Richie Ginther took their first win in Mexico. The RA300 3ltr car was built for the 1966/1967 championship and John Surtees won the Italian Grand Prix, Honda showed their engine background as the RA300 was the highest revving 3ltr car on the grid. Honda also dominated the F2 championship that year winning every race with Jack Brabhams team. Honda then decided to move away from F1 over the next few years as they had proved their abilities and wanted to focus on their now prospering road car business.

Honda came back to F1 in the 80's however this time as an engine supplier. The company supplied lot's of team's in the years they competed (1983-1992), these included McLaren, Williams, Lotus, Tyrell and Spirit. This lead to six constructors championships and five drivers, and almost domination of the time they supplied engines. They however basically dropped out of the sport again, some say as they could not come to an agreement about running a complete works team. They did however supply their engines under the Mugen name up until 1998.

In the 1998/1999 time frame Honda hired Harvey Postlethwaite and the rumour started that Honda wanted to return as a full works team. The Harvey Postlethwaite designed car was built by Dallara and underwent a full test session in 1999, however Harvey Postlethwaite suffered a heart attack at one of the test's and Honda decided to shelve the project. They had however designed and built a new F1 engine. This engine later ended up powering the BAR car the following season.

Jordan also used this engine in the 2001 and 2002 season's with Honda dropping them in 2003 so they could concentrate on the BAR setup more closely. This showed in 2004 when Honda bought a 45% share in the BAR Honda team and then in 2005 completely bought the team away from British American Tobacco and re-branded the team as Honda Racing and have Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.