The Spirit of '83: Honda's first return

Suppose Honda was re-entering grand prix racing this season with Marussia rather than McLaren. Or supplying engines to a team plucked from GP2. That would be an unlikely scenario today, but it was the kind of low-key approach that the Japanese manufacturer chose 32 years ago.

It didn't sign up with a grandee of the grid to end its 14-year absence from Formula 1, but promoted one of its existing squads from the lower formulae and only turned up mid-season with what was little more than a modified Formula 2 car.

The road to Honda's return to grand prix racing with the tiny Spirit Racing team in 1983 was one traversed in a series of pigeon steps.

It started with Nobuhiko Kawamoto, who'd worked as a young engineer on the marque's 1960s F1 campaigns, becoming boss of the Honda R&D department in the late '70s. He conceived the two-litre V6 F2 powerplant with an eventual F1 entry in mind, though there were also studies undertaken on a V10 turbo.

Even when Spirit, which had undertaken a European F2 campaign with Honda engines in 1982, was chosen to test the first RA163E twin-turbo F1 engine there was no commitment to go racing. Only after three months of development was the decision to join the grid made. And then at the last minute.

Spirit F2 team was Honda's route back into F1, spearheaded by Wickham (right) © LAT

The back story to Spirit's F1 entry began when Honda R&D ordered a March 812 to be fitted with the V6 F2 engine that had been racing in the back of works Ralt chassis since the middle of 1980.

John Wickham, who was team manager of the March F2 set-up, interpreted the purchase of the car as an attempt to keep Ralt boss Ron Tauranac on his toes, though the March-Honda did subsequently race in Japan in '81.

"There was a concern that although Ralt was performing [it won the '81 European title with Geoff Lees] they might have been taking their mind off the job, because they were producing so many Formula 3 cars," explains Wickham. "Eventually that led Honda to decide they wanted a group of people who could concentrate fully on F2."

And that desire resulted in the birth of Spirit Racing, which took its name from the bizarre wording on a Bridgestone advertising hoarding spotted by Wickham as he was driving around Tokyo.

'Come Racing Spirit' it proclaimed. It had a ring to it, he reckoned.

Honda provided Spirit with engines and workshop space in Slough, in the premises previously used as the European base of its 500cc grand prix motorcycle team, but it was far from an overt factory team.

Wickham remembers having to "go out and find about half the budget" for its 1982 F2 campaign with a chassis designed by fellow Spirit director and March defector Gordon Coppuck, who had a brief spell at the British constructor after his departure from McLaren, and ex-Lotus engineer John Baldwin.

The team even had to pay rent on the Slough building.

Wickham doesn't believe that Honda encouraged Spirit's formation with an eye on a future in F1. In fact, he recalls that Ralt was offered the chance to start testing with the new engine before Spirit got the call.

Converted Spirit Formula 2 car became a test hack for Honda's new F1 engine © LAT

"They said to us it's either you or Ron, and he doesn't want to do F1 because it would be too complicated for him and his business," recalls Wickham. "They asked us if we wanted to do it, and we said, 'absolutely'.

"There was always talk of a turbo, but it was all hearsay until they took me into a workshop in the middle of the year and showed me the engine, but they didn't make the decision that we would be involved until before the last F2 races in Europe."

Spirit missed out on the F2 title with its neat 201 design, which took eight poles from 13 races in the hands of Thierry Boutsen, who finished third in the points, and Stefan Johansson.

Straight after the Misano finale, Spirit set about converting one of its F2 fleet, chassis #4 used by Johansson in the closing races, to take the new F1 engine.

The deadline to run the car was set for November 24 for no other reason than it was Wickham's birthday. Both Boutsen and Johansson tested that day at Silverstone, after which the team set about converting the car to flat-bottom specification after the rules bombshell the previous month outlawing ground-effects.

Spirit, together with both Boutsen and Johansson, decamped to California in search of decent weather after Christmas, running a car with shortened sidepods and dubbed the 201B at Riverside and Willow Springs. On the team's return to the UK, Wickham began pushing to race the car.

"We were a race team, so that's what we wanted to do," he explains. "We also felt that if we didn't race, the engine would end up going somewhere else."

The go-ahead to race the car came very late. Wickham was waiting in his office as the midnight deadline for F1 entries approached. "We went right up to the entry deadline," he recalls. "I remember falling asleep by the fax machine."

Spirit-Honda official F1 debut came in the British Grand Prix © LAT

The plan was to join the F1 grid at the British Grand Prix in July with a new-build, revised version of the F2 design with a bigger fuel tank, and to take in the non-points Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in April with the ex-F2 car. Johansson, meanwhile, got the nod over Boutsen to race a car by now known as the 201C.

"There wasn't much between them: Thierry understood the car better, but Stefan had the ability to go out, wring the car's neck and set a lap time," explains Wickham. "He was closer to the stereotype of what Honda thought a racing driver should be."

Honda didn't make an auspicious debut in the last non-championship race in F1 history. Engine failures prevented Johansson from setting a representative time in qualifying and he retired with another after completing five laps, but he did end up second fastest to eventual winner Keke Rosberg's Williams during unofficial practice.

"That original car was very overweight and it was absolutely freezing cold, so the Cosworth-engined cars couldn't get any heat into their tyres and even the other turbos were struggling too," recalls Johansson. "Everyone was running the softest tyre, but we were blistering them because we were so damn heavy."

Engine failures were a regular occurrence through Spirit's part-season with the Honda V6. Detonation and turbo-seal problems were the most regular reasons.

"We ran electronic fuel injection, which back then was very new in racing, at the personal request of Mr [Soichiro] Honda himself," explains Coppuck. "Having to integrate that into the rest of the package caused a lot of stress.

"We had a lot of problems, which made some of the qualifying performances from Stefan pretty fantastic. Sometimes he'd only get one lap in the session but would pull out an unbelievable time."

Seventh in the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix was the alliance's highlight © LAT

Johansson remembers spending little time in the gym in '83: "I didn't have to do any physical training, because I did enough at the races running back to the pits to jump in the T-car."

The Swede's most vivid recollection of the season, however, was the massive turbo lag of the Honda engine.

"You had to anticipate the power delivery in the exit of the corner and give yourself enough room to gather it all up," he explains. "The power delivery was unbelievably bad; it was like a bomb going off behind you."

Johansson notched up a best qualifying result of 13th at Hockenheim, while he got to the finish in seventh at Zandvoort, only one lap down, in what was meant to be Spirit's final race with the 201C.

A new Spirit called the 101 was due to come on stream at the Italian GP. The car was built on the experience of its predecessor, but had a larger fuel capacity that would have allowed it to complete a grand prix distance without stopping for fuel.

Production delays with the car meant it missed scrutineering at Monza.

"We were late and got permission to go to to the second scrutineering session, but the car didn't turn up until after that one," explains Wickham.

"That was a pretty bad weekend from the engine point of view. I think we went through four engines with the existing car."

Reliability issues caused Honda to ditch Spirit and focus solely on Williams © LAT

Ten days later, Wickham was called to Japan and given the bad news that Spirit wouldn't be receiving F1 engines for the following year.

Williams had landed a deal with Honda, something that had been communicated to Spirit shortly after it was given the go-ahead to race in the spring.

There hadn't been a commitment to continue with the new team, but the possibility of running one car alongside Williams was on the table.

"We were told that the engine reliability was such that they couldn't supply two teams and therefore we wouldn't be doing the last race in South Africa, which was to be Williams's first race with Honda," reveals Wickham. "They said I had to hand all our engines and parts over to Williams after our final race at Brands [the hastily arranged European Grand Prix]."

Everything had been in place for Spirit to continue. Wickham had found sponsorship from Skoal Bandit chewing tobacco, which eventually ended up with the RAM team in 1984, and a tyre-supply deal with Goodyear. The problem was that both were conditional on a supply of Honda engines.

Spirit limped on in F1 with Hart (and very briefly Cosworth) power, Pirelli tyres and paying drivers in Mauro Baldi and Huub Rothengatter. It opted to sell its Pirelli deal to the tyre-less Toleman team after three races of 1985 to pay off it debts and attempt to regroup.

It turned out that there was no way back and the team closed its doors towards the end of the year - or just about the same time that Honda and Williams were getting into their stride with victories in the final three GPs of the season.