Remembering Honda's first F1 comeback, 40 years on

There are few certainties within Formula 1 and, throughout its 73-year history as a world championship, the landscape has changed indelibly on myriad occasions as progress and technology intertwine with the premise of racing some of the world’s fastest cars.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been fixtures and cornerstones that have largely stood the test of time in F1, with iconic marques such as Ferrari having been involved since the very beginning. Circuits like Monaco and Monza, although barely resembling their early iterations, have also represented an integral part of the calendar aside from a few omissions here and there throughout the years.

Teams and manufacturers have come and gone in that time, depending on prevailing market trends or simply running out of money. In the former case, one manufacturer has hardly been a consistent presence in F1 – but rather, its on-off relationship with the championship could be considered a fixture of itself.

As of 2023, Honda’s current position in F1 can be defined as curious at best. The Japanese giant’s powertrains are still used by the Red Bull and AlphaTauri teams, and its time-tested serif logotype occupies a small space on the energy drink giant-owned teams’ engine covers, but the power units it designed are now Red Bull Powertrains badged. For a manufacturer that has been in and out of F1 more times than Nico Hulkenberg, its ambiguous standing in the current day is probably unsurprising. It’s not the first occasion that the marque has had one foot in and one foot out of the championship, typified by the Mugen-Honda programme of the mid-to-late 1990s.

But Honda will return in full force in 2026. After casting its net out for a team to link up with for the revised engine formula planned for that season, having been confirmed as one of the six interested manufacturers, it will unite with Aston Martin. Although a full reunion with Red Bull was touted, the Milton Keynes squad’s internal powertrain project will tie up with Ford instead after turning down a Porsche deal at the 11th hour.

PLUS: What Aston Martin's Honda deal reveals about its true F1 mindset

When F1 was largely dominated by the British 'garagistes' running Climax and BRM engines, and the larger manufacturers like Ferrari and Porsche, Honda first entered in 1964 to disrupt the prevailing European influence in the championship. It stayed in the ring for five years, departing at the end of 1968 to focus its efforts on the US market – hastened by Jo Schlesser’s horrific death at Rouen piloting the magnesium-bodied RA302 that year.

Honda's first foray into F1 came back in 1964, taking on a series dominated by small but experienced British squads and Ferrari

Photo by: David Phipps

Honda’s return 40 years ago for the 1983 season was decidedly low-key. The seeds had been planted four years prior with its emergence in the European Formula 2 championship as it elected to take on the duopoly of BMW and Hart engines. The two-litre V6 motor that Honda produced - or rather, commissioned John Judd to produce – was designed exclusively for the works Ralt team, as the Ron Tauranac-owned manufacturer had parted ways with Toleman. Entries were sporadic in 1980 as Honda and Ralt attempted to reclaim a foothold in F2, and Nigel Mansell’s second place at the Hockenheim finale proved to be its best result in a year dominated by Toleman-Hart duo Brian Henton and Derek Warwick. The following year, Geoff Lees took the Honda-powered RH6 to the title with three wins, beating the March-BMW of Thierry Boutsen by 14 points. With success in the second year of F2, Honda could accelerate its efforts in producing a turbocharged version of its V6 engine for the 1983 F1 season.

Honda expanded beyond the exclusivity it offered Ralt early on, with its engines now used by Team Ikuzawa in its John Player Special-liveried March 822, and with the new Spirit team that had entered F2 with its own cars.

The 1.5-litre V6 turbo engine that Honda produced was effectively just a short-stroke version of the F2 entry to bring the capacity down, cutting the stroke down from 52.3mm to just 39.2mm

Formed by ex-March team manager John Wickham and Gordon Coppuck, the former McLaren designer who penned the F1 title-winning M23 and the three-time Indianapolis 500-winning M16, Spirit quickly found success in the second-tier championship. The 201 chassis, penned by Coppuck and John Baldwin, racked up three wins courtesy of Boutsen’s efforts – and plans were made to redesign the 201 to compete at the highest level, with Honda supplying an engine to ensure its return to F1 was somewhat through the back door.

This came at a time when turbocharged engines were slightly more in vogue, as the pain that Renault took from the early years with the concept had begun to bear fruit. BMW had joined F1 with its inline-four turbo engine, Hart had a version of that arrangement powering the Tolemans, and even Ferrari had given up its flat-12 for a turbocharged engine – albeit largely due to the packaging challenges thrown up by its sprawling 015 powerplant. The turbo revolution was set to continue in 1983, as TAG was funding a Porsche-designed twin-turbo engine for McLaren, while Alfa Romeo developed a turbocharged V8 that became renowned for its thirst for fuel.

The 1.5-litre V6 turbo engine that Honda produced was effectively just a short-stroke version of the F2 entry to bring the capacity down, cutting the stroke down from 52.3mm to just 39.2mm. IHI, the Japanese manufacturer that still to this day produces turbochargers for the contemporary Honda F1 engines, was commissioned to produce a twin-turbo package for the resulting RA163E.

Honda's first comeback started with a concept developed from its F2 engine

Spirit’s 201 had also been developed to conform to F1 regulations to ensure Honda was getting the data it needed. The aerodynamics had been adapted to the flat-bottom rules introduced in 1983 as ground-effect cars were no longer permitted, necessitating an increase in rear wing size and the addition of short, boxy sidepods. Behind the wheel was Stefan Johansson, who had driven for Spirit during the 1982 F2 season and had been charged with logging the miles for the team as it prepared for its full debut at the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. The Swede had dabbled with F1 before, but only fleetingly with two failures to qualify in Shadow’s lacklustre DN11 in 1980.

Johansson’s qualifying time for the Race of Champions was a mammoth 19.734 seconds off the pace, although problems with reliability intervened and restricted him to a single lap of the circuit. He lined up 12th of 13 cars as Jean-Louis Schlesser, driving for the RAM squad, started behind him having not set a time during qualifying at all.

"I have quite a lot of good memories from that, and it was my first real opportunity in Formula 1," Johansson tells Autosport. "It was obviously a progression from the Formula 2 programme the year before, I mean, it was pioneering days in general back then, but I think it was even more so with this project.

"Something went wrong in qualifying with the car and we didn't get a proper run. But in practice, it was freezing cold, and it was early in the year. Brands Hatch, you know, it was like almost snowing at some point! Our car must have been at least a hundred kilos overweight, and we were the only car I think who got the heat in the tyres, so everybody else was struggling to get any temperature. We were almost blistering the softest tyres; we were blindingly fast! I think we were actually fastest on the first day of practice, or the first session.

"I don't know what went pear-shaped in qualifying, but the car was obviously truly off the pace because it was brand new, and the car was extremely heavy and all that goes with it. But reliability was really the biggest issue."

The race had started in a more encouraging manner, and Johansson was able to make up a few places in the opening laps despite the excess weight of his converted F2 machinery. After just four laps of the Kent circuit, Johansson’s Honda powerplant gave up the ghost at Dingle Dell and concluded his efforts early. There was approximately three months between Spirit’s Race of Champions outing and its first grand prix at Silverstone, offering ample opportunity for Spirit and Honda to work on their reliability problems together. Johansson says that the two sides of the team worked harmoniously towards their common goal of making the grade in F1, to the point where some of Honda’s engineers moved into a house near Spirit’s base in Slough.

His recollections of the engine itself were that it had good power but, when it came to dialling in reliability, the early developments of the RA163E had proved prone to self-immolation – particularly when it came to improvising with turbo boost prior to the race.

Johansson feels the close collaboration between Spirit and Honda helped it hugely in its early days

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

"We were in very close contact," recalls Johansson. "I was working directly with them the whole time with Mr Kawamoto, he was the big boss at the time and Hagi-san who was the project manager for the racing project.

"It was every day pretty much. When you're in the middle of it, whatever team you work with, it's full time. Every minute of the day almost, you try to think of something or you talk about different things to develop and what have you. It was a very, very close relationship.

"We had obviously big reliability issues, but frankly, most of the turbo cars back then did; the drop out of cars in the races was pretty high. I think there was potential there and the engine had pretty good power when we got it running. We had no electronics, there was none of that, so I remember how they'd lean in on the grid for the races, and just give it another turn of boost, we had no idea what that would mean in real terms - it's just like, ‘give it a bit more’!

"Then the thing would blow up five laps later on! But it was good times. I remember the Honda group of guys there, there weren't that many of them - probably five or six guys maybe. They rented a house in Slough and they were literally rebuilding the engines in the kitchen!

"We literally bolted that engine into a Formula 2 car. If you looked at the sort of the shape and the aerodynamics of the car, I think there wasn’t a radiused corner anywhere, it was just a square box" Stefan Johansson

"We always used to joke back at the time because I didn't have to do much physical training between the races, because I always had to run back to the pits in every session and jump into the spare car before the session was over. So I got a two kilometre sprint every Friday morning, and then one on Saturday as well."

Spirit made its F1 debut with Honda power at the British Grand Prix 40 years ago, on 16 July 1983. Despite the limitations of the chassis, Johansson managed to hurl his car onto 14th on the grid, beating the likes of Niki Lauda in the Ford-powered McLaren and Nigel Mansell in his Lotus-Renault in qualifying.

Again, reliability proved to be the biggest bugbear. Johansson managed five laps before the Spirit’s fuel system packed up, but it was nonetheless an encouraging debut for the team effectively running as a rolling test bed. At Hockenheim, a pure power circuit, Johansson lined up 13th for the German Grand Prix but the Honda couldn’t handle the strain and combusted on lap 12 while running as high as ninth.

Honda's early efforts on its comeback showed it was quick but unreliable

"It was very exciting, we were more than happy with the qualifying in the first genuine race we did," Johansson remembers. "The whole thing had potential and again, we literally bolted that engine into a Formula 2 car. If you looked at the sort of the shape and the aerodynamics of the car, I think there wasn’t a radiused corner anywhere, it was just a square box. But everybody was very excited, and I think encouraged by the performance we did in our first proper race. Everybody could see the potential."

Spirit and Johansson clocked in their first classified result at the Osterreichring a week later, placing 12th having started from 16th. A fortnight later, Johansson secured the team’s best result of seventh at Zandvoort, a lap down on sixth-placed finisher Michele Alboreto in the Tyrrell. Monza resulted in another early failure to finish as the distributor failed after four laps, and the subsequent return to Brands Hatch for the European Grand Prix yielded another finish – albeit down in 14th.

Although Honda and Spirit had exhausted much in the way of resource in getting to F1 to conduct a glorified testing programme live during races, the former in the relationship had much greater aspirations. Williams had caught wind that Honda was planning to develop its own engines and, as far back as 1982, the two had entered negotiations over a prospective works deal. After all, Williams was a championship-winning outfit and had done so with the identikit Cosworth DFV in the back. But Williams knew that, reliable as it was, it couldn’t rely on a naturally aspirated engine when the turbocharged contingent was becoming more powerful with each passing race.

Ford and Cosworth were hardly rushing to put together a turbocharged package either, so Williams did not have the luxury of maintaining its loyalties; as a result, it concluded a deal with Honda for 1984 and beyond. It, however, had the chance to prepare for its new partnership for the final race of 1983 and debuted the new FW09 at the Kyalami season finale. Thus, Honda packed up and decamped to Williams early, leaving Spirit high and dry without an engine and thus could not participate in South Africa.

"I think it was a little bit [of a surprise], and I don't know exactly what went on there," Johansson remembers, "but I think there was obviously some politics as to be expected. I think it took everybody a little bit by surprise, and it set my career back. I thought I'd finally made it into Formula 1 and then to take a step back again, I actually went to Japan and Honda sorted me out with a Formula 2 drive in Japan.

"I did that in '84 and then jumped in anything I could get my hands on. That turned things around dramatically, because then I ended up in the Ferrari the following year. It sort of worked out all right for me in the end."

Seventh place for Johansson in the Dutch GP was as good as it got for Spirit before Honda left to team up with Williams

Photo by: Andre Vor / Sutton Images

By way of an apology, Honda helped Spirit secure a supply of Hart turbocharged engines for 1984, but the little British squad never quite hit the heights it had managed with Honda. Johansson left the team, as Mauro Baldi brought more money to secure the drive.

Williams secured its first win with Honda power in the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, thanks to Keke Rosberg’s irrepressible efforts behind the wheel of a car that struggled to contain the Honda engine. The chassis flex apparent in that year’s FW09 caused the RA164E engine block to twist, and the ladles full of turbo lag made the car very difficult to drive. Nonetheless, it set Williams on course for a successful four-year relationship with Honda, until the Tokyo marque switched to McLaren in 1988.

Williams had caught wind that Honda was planning to develop its own engines and, as far back as 1982, the two had entered negotiations over a prospective works deal

Honda has enjoyed high-profile comebacks since, joining BAR in 2000 after scrapping its full-works team plans after the death of project lead Harvey Postlethwaite, and then again in 2015 with the disastrous ‘size-zero’ McLaren partnership. Its later successes with Red Bull had allowed Honda to keep its hand in, but its full return in partnership with Aston Martin in 2026 will further add to its stop-start history in F1.

Honda ended 1983 with Williams, laying down foundations for success to come

Photo by: Motorsport Images