The Honda RA099 was a prototype Formula One racecar, commissioned by Honda, designed by ex-Ferrari and Tyrrell designer Harvey Postlethwaite and built by Dallara in 1999. Its purpose was similar to the one surrounding the Toyota TF101 of 2001, in that it was supposed to be a working test car used in preparation for a full-scale assault on Grand Prix racing in the following years.
The RA099 was designed in a few months by former Tyrrell Racing employees who joined Honda after the takeover of their team by British American Racing. The single-seater made its first laps on on the Italian circuit of Varano de' Melegari, then participated, alongside the other Formula One teams, in the 1999 winter tests where it stood out for its reliability and good performance.
While Honda expressed reservations about its commitment as a constructor, Harvey Postlethwaite succumbed to a heart attack in mid- during a test session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. On , Honda abandoned its Formula One team, preferring to partner with British American Racing, which became its works team through the exclusive supply of Honda engines and a technical partnership concerning the development of the British team's single-seaters. The engine manufacturer Supertec, owned by Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, then unsuccessfully considered taking over Honda Racing Developments to enter under its own name in Formula One.
Background and development
Honda, a constructor engaged in Formula One in the 1960s
Soichiro Honda, the founding president, who dreamed that one of his cars would one day become world champion in a global motorsport category and whose brand already enjoyed worldwide notoriety for its motorcycles, decided to enter Formula One, a motorsport then centered on Europe and poorly known to the Japanese, to promote its offensive on the automobile market. To prepare, the manufacturer acquired a Climax engine to study it with a view to building its own engine. Initially, Honda wanted to enter Formula One as an engine supplier; contacts were made with Lotus, one of the best teams on the grid. While the Lotus-Honda project appeared very advanced, Colin Chapman suddenly broke off negotiations at the beginning of 1964. As a result, Honda decided to design its own chassis. The employees of the Honda Research Center, behind the Honda RA271 equipped with a V12 engine, were indeed convinced that their creation was capable of winning Grands Prix.
In the 1964 season, the Honda RA271 driven by Ronnie Bucknum failed to finish any of the four Grands Prix in which it was entered. The following year, two Honda RA272s were entered in the championship, which put the Japanese team's staff under severe strain. Nevertheless, it managed to take advantage of the RA272's fuel injection system during the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix, held on the Mexico City circuit, located at altitude: Richie Ginther won Honda's first victory in Formula One history.
In the 1966 season, the RA273, an evolution of the RA272, proved unreliable. In the 1967 season, Honda subcontracted the design of a Formula One chassis to the British company Lola Cars to replace the RA273, which was far too heavy at , with a lighter chassis. From a single-seater intended to race in the USAC championship, Lola developed the Honda RA300, weighing only . The single-seater, nicknamed Hondola by the specialized press of the time, made a strong impression from its first race appearance at Monza during the 1967 Italian Grand Prix as John Surtees won Honda's second victory in Formula One. Honda and Lola ended their partnership in the 1968 season and the Japanese firm developed the RA301 alone, whose recurring reliability problems led Honda to interrupt the "first phase of its involvement in Formula One" and leave the discipline that same year. following the death of Jo Schlesser at the 1968 French Grand Prix at Rouen in a Honda RA302.
A winning engine supplier in the 1980s Honda had to wait until the 1983 season to return to Formula One, but only as an engine supplier. Indeed, the cynical comments from discipline specialists arguing that the Hondolas were not true chassis built by Honda pushed the Japanese to focus on supplying engines to customer teams. Honda partnered with the modest Spirit Racing team by equipping its single-seaters with a V6 engine turbocharged engine that was merely an evolution of an engine victorious in Formula Two in the early 1980s.
Honda, whose ambitions in Formula One were growing, then turned to Williams. After three years of building up, Honda produced one of the best engines on the grid and enabled Williams to win the Constructors' World Championship in the 1986 and 1987 seasons. From the 1988 to 1992 seasons, Honda partnered with McLaren, which won four Constructors' Championships, from 1988 to the 1991 season. As an engine supplier, between 1984 and 1992, Honda won 68 Grand Prix, including two with the Lotus team, which it only supplied with older versions of engines provided to Williams in 1987 and 1988.
Nobuhiko Kawamoto, Honda's president at the time, stated that, despite the success with McLaren, the British team never understood the motivation driving the Japanese engine supplier to engage in Formula One: while McLaren aimed to win championships, Honda preferred to develop and improve its technology. This difference in philosophy and the fact that Formula One allowed Honda to address only a mostly European audience led Honda to end "its second phase of involvement in Formula One" at the end of the 1992 season to engage, in 1994, still as an engine supplier, in the American Champ Car championship, the United States representing a better market for the company.
Honda single-seater projects in the 1990s
Nobuhiko Kawamoto believed that his company's long domination with its V12 engine meant that Formula One no longer represented a real technological challenge for its engineers. To strengthen their motivation and pay tribute to Soichiro Honda, who had since passed away, a study on building a Formula One single-seater was launched in 1991 under the direction of Ken Hashimoto and Keinosuke Taki, respectively project manager and development manager of Honda R&D in Tochigi, in partnership with Tokyo Institute of Technology and the engineering school of Yokohama National University, where the young Japanese manufacturer's engineers were trained. They carried out this project, financially supported by Honda, outside working hours: it was therefore not an official project.
Without access to data on the Formula One single-seaters competing in 1991, Honda's engineers designed the monocoque in carbon fiber and the suspensions of their single-seater, named RC100 (or Honda RC-F1 1.0X, chassis RC1-203) using analysis of their engineering calculations. The RC100 was covered in white paint (then nicknamed the "white crow" by its engineers) and deliberately likened to a Formula 3000 single-seater so as not to arouse suspicions from Formula One specialists about Honda's projects. Nevertheless, the RC100's wind tunnel tests did not satisfy the Japanese manufacturer.
From mid-1992, Honda R&D's young engineers reworked the RC101 chassis to improve it and bring it into compliance with the Formula One technical regulations in force for the 1993 season. Thus, the entire aerodynamics of the single-seater was redesigned, giving birth to the RC101B (or RC-F1 1.5X, chassis RC1B-101). The chassis was then tested in Tochigi and then on the Suzuka Circuit, owned by the Japanese manufacturer, by Kawamoto in person, fueling rumors that Honda was considering a return to Formula One from the 1994 season. In March 1993, the RC101 successfully passed an FIA-approved crash test, stipulating that the RC101 could have been entered in a Grand Prix.
While the RC101 was presented at Suzuka in January 1994, observers abandoned it after about fifteen minutes in favor of a second single-seater, unveiled simultaneously: the RC101B (or RC-F1 2.0X, chassis RC2-001). This one, slimmer than its predecessor, complied with the technical regulations in force for the 1994 season. However, the fatal accidents of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix prompted the FIA to quickly modify the technical regulations, which Honda then applied to its RC101B, until 1996.
Towards a return as a constructor via Dome or Tyrrell for 1998
At the end of the 1995 season, it became clear that Nobuhiko Kawamoto, Honda's president, wanted his company to return to Formula One as a constructor by the 1998 season, one year after the arrival of tire manufacturer Bridgestone, which equipped the RC100 chassis. Honda also wanted to benefit from the experience gained by the Japanese constructor Dome, which was preparing its arrival in Formula One for the 1997 season, and which planned to conduct a year of testing with its F105, its prototype chassis powered by a Mugen-Honda V10 engine. Rumors announced that engineer Osamu Goto, behind Honda's success as an engine supplier in the 1980s and now head of the engine department at Scuderia Ferrari, would be in charge of Honda's return to Formula One.
In , Honda was heavily courted by various teams; the Italian company Benetton Formula sought to negotiate a sponsorship contract for Luca Cadalora, a Honda rider in the world speed motorcycle championship in the category, which would allow Flavio Briatore, the sporting director of Benetton Formula, to consider a subsequent engine supply from 1998, as their engine supplier Renault announced leaving Formula One at the end of the 1997 season. This agreement would also include a supply of Mugen-Honda engines to the French team Ligier (owned by Briatore) in which Toranosuke Takagi, Honda's protected Japanese driver, would be given a seat. At the same time, rumors claimed that Takagi and his mentor, former Formula One driver Satoru Nakajima (also supported by Honda), would buy the Tyrrell Racing team to make it, at a lower cost, the Japanese manufacturer's chassis department. Finally, Tom Walkinshaw, owner of the Arrows team, wanted to use his contract linking him with Bridgestone to obtain Honda engines from 1998. A less affirmed rumor evoked a partnership between Honda and Williams, the best team on the grid, which would allow the Japanese company to fight against Mercedes-Benz, Honda's main commercial rival, which supplied engines to McLaren. Another rumor, probably launched by Ron Dennis to disrupt negotiations between Honda and the other teams, announced an agreement between McLaren and Honda.
In , Nobuhiko Kawamoto announced that Honda was not ready for a return to Formula One in 1998. Japanese observers then believed that the Japanese manufacturer planned to support Dome, which had postponed its championship arrival to that same date, before taking full control when it was competitive, or that Honda would take shares in the Tyrrell team through Satoru Nakajima. This decision did not prevent Benetton, Arrows, and Tyrrell from continuing to negotiate for a supply of Mugen-Honda engines for the 1998 season.
An independent commitment in Formula One for 2000
In , the Japanese specialized press reported that Honda was planning a return to Formula One for the 2000 season: the manufacturer had regained a good financial situation since its withdrawal from the discipline in the 1992 season and wanted to use Formula One to improve its production car sales in Europe. Moreover, the Irish team Jordan Grand Prix signed a contract with Mugen-Honda for the supply of V10 engines from 1998. The contract stipulated that these blocks would be designed by Honda and prepared by Mugen-Honda, the company run by Hirotoshi Honda, son of the Japanese manufacturer's founder, who owned 40%. However, both entities denied any synergy even though observers believed that Mugen-Honda's presence in Formula One was to allow Honda to prepare its return.