The unsolved mystery of the Japanese-backed McLaren F1 B-team

History is littered with failed Formula 1 projects, but one of the most intriguing and bewildering flops of this century was one that aimed to make Jean Alesi a team principal and could have provided Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 drive in a Ron Dennis-blessed, Japanese-funded, McLaren-Mercedes B-team.

The mysterious figure behind the Direxiv plan was Shin Akiyama, who from Monaco ran a Tokyo-based investment company that aimed to expand by “collaborating with European organisations looking to enter into the Japanese market using motorsports as a medium for promotions throughout Europe and Japan”. He was from a wealthy family background, sustained by a pharmaceutical products business, and had some serious cash to splash.

His conglomerate was a random mishmash of luxury goods and cosmetics firms, mainly based in Monaco, along with Noene (a Swiss producer of shoe insoles), a private-jet-leasing concern and a management company. Akiyama appointed Misato Haga, a Super GT team boss and former ‘race queen’, as CEO and figurehead of the Direxiv Motorsport project, which was formed in January 2005. After starting small in the GT300 class of Super GT that season, Direxiv sponsorship deals also emerged in GP2 with Olivier Pla (at DPR), Clivio Piccione (Durango) and Hiroki Yoshimoto (BCN). 

Then, in 2006, it went wild: Direxiv logos appeared upon the sidepods of the McLaren F1 cars and on Alex Wurz’s helmet at Williams, while McLaren protege Hamilton carried them on his ART GP2 machine and his overalls. It became title sponsor of the DPR GP2 team, which was rebranded DPR Direxiv. Yoshimoto’s sponsor deal at BCN continued, while Maro Engel ran Direxiv logos in British F3 with Carlin, and the company backed entries in Super GT and Formula Nippon in Japan. 

But the truly huge plan was going on behind the scenes – Direxiv had lodged a Formula 1 World Championship entry for the 2008 season and had a five-year proposal on the table to run McLaren-Mercedes customer cars. 

Direxiv logos adorned the GP2 cars of David Price Racing's 2006 lineup Olivier Pla and Clivio Piccione

Photo by: Sutton Images

David Price, whose DPR GP2 team was resplendent in Direxiv’s white-and-blue colours, was a key element of the project. 

“Shin came across as proper at the beginning,” Price recalls. “He had a huge apartment in Monaco, near the Columbus hotel. He was quite a big bloke for a Japanese guy and I got on all right with him… I didn’t foresee any drama, that’s for sure.

“I remember he had a massive store of wine – crates of the stuff – on his balcony, and not cheap shit either. He gave me three bottles for my birthday, so I got a merchant to give me a price on them and they were over three grand each!” 

"Ron was moving McLaren to the new factory at the time, and Shin said Ron told him that he could rent the old factory in Woking and make a Mercedes B-team. The idea was Direxiv would be his partner, and the guy was really keen to do it" Jean Alesi

Ex-F1 star Alesi, whose wife Kumiko Goto was a huge singing and movie star in Japan, was appointed Direxiv Motorsport’s executive director while also racing for Mercedes in the DTM. 

“The story with me started because a friend of mine, Olivier Pla’s father, used to race with me in the Renault 5 Cup in France and we were really close friends,” says Alesi. “So, when his son was racing, he found this sponsor. He said to me, ‘I have contact with this Japanese guy and he says he will sponsor my full season if he could meet me in Monaco.’ I said OK, because I wanted to help. 

“I went to see Shin on his boat in Monaco and he said, ‘Look, I have a big project in my mind – I want to make an F1 team with McLaren.’ I said, ‘Hey wait! What are you talking about?’ and he said, ‘No, it’s fine, I already had a meeting about it with Ron Dennis.’ 

“Remember, Ron was moving McLaren to the new factory at the time, and Shin said Ron told him that he could rent the old factory in Woking and make a Mercedes B-team. The idea was Direxiv would be his partner, and the guy was really keen to do it. I said, ‘Good idea, but make sure everything is fine, you know, because Ron likes everything to be perfect.’

Alesi was appointed to head up the project and was slated to be the team principal of the Direxiv-backed B-team

Photo by: GP2 Media Service

“So the next day I got a message from Ron saying he needed to speak with me about it. I went to his boat in the port, and he said, ‘Look, I’m in close contact, we are finishing the contract and Shin Akiyama asked to have you be part of the project.’ I said, ‘Sure Ron, but are you sure it’s OK with him, everything is fine?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, the guy has already paid me two million and everything is going ahead.’ I said, ‘No problem!’ and everything started well like that.” 

In February 2006, Direxiv’s ties to McLaren were officially revealed, including a typically Ron-speak ‘Dynamic Wellbeing Programme’ with the F1 team, which was also tied into its support of Hamilton. 

“You have to remember that Hamilton won the GP2 title wearing Direxiv on his overalls,” says Alesi. “It’s funny to think about that now. It was all before he became such a big star. Ron, at the time, took this money from him to pay for Lewis’s championship year with ART. 

“Everything was around the Mercedes [junior driver] programme and the first driver was going to be Lewis. Remember, nobody knew what would happen with Lewis and McLaren, nobody knew that this B-team would never happen. Everything seemed like it was going ahead.” 

Although he felt trepidation about taking the huge leap into F1 team management with no experience, Alesi says he felt reassured by Dennis’s involvement in the project. 

“It would have been fun, because Ron was controlling everything,” he says. “My real concern was that it’s such a huge and difficult job to be a team principal, you can’t really be a beginner at this level. I was going to have Ron at my shoulder, which would have been fantastic.” 

The Direxiv F1 plan became public knowledge, ironically enough, on 1 April 2006 – it was one of 22 teams that applied for the 12 available spots, with 11 of those entries being granted to current F1 teams. That left Direxiv as one of 11 proposed squads trying to claim the final slot.

Hamilton won 2006 GP2 title with Direxiv backing, a firm indication of the impending McLaren tie-up

Photo by: Gareth Bumstead / Motorsport Images

This all occurred at a time when there was much talk of a potential breakaway F1 series, while the customer car topic was also a political hot potato. There were plenty of rumours swirling but, at face value, Direxiv appeared a decent bet given its motorsport funding record to date…

Price remembers: “The deal to do F1 with McLaren came out of the blue for me. Ron had actually helped me get started on my own back in 1974, when he was running an F2 team out of Mo Gomm’s place. He gave me some advice as he was alright in those days, and we were both based in Woking. I have to say, Ron and I have never really got on, especially since he got into F1.

"Jean was going to be team principal and wanted me to run it, but I wasn’t too keen on being involved, to be honest. For one thing, I couldn’t imagine myself working evenly remotely near to Ron" David Price

“He had this meeting with Shin on a boat in Monaco, and Shin had asked me to go too. It wasn’t really a heavy meeting, but from that came a proposal from McLaren to Shin for the B-team; it was a very comprehensive plan that a firm of consultants and accountants had done for them. And I know he paid for the old factory to be refurbished and it was supposed to run out of there.

“Jean was going to be team principal and wanted me to run it, but I wasn’t too keen on being involved, to be honest. For one thing, I couldn’t imagine myself working evenly remotely near to Ron, and I never really did like doing F1 anyway.”

Price needn’t have worried. In July 2006, the FIA announced that Prodrive would get the available slot on the 2008 F1 grid. Soon after that bombshell had landed, McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh admitted Direxiv’s plans were now “unlikely” to happen. Haga, who today runs a team in Super GT, says that was the true catalyst for the collapse of Direxiv’s interest in the sport. 

“Once it was clear we could not go into F1, the investors lost interest and everything unravelled quite quickly,” she says. “Everything was set [with McLaren] and we applied, but we were rejected by the FIA, and we weren’t told why. If we had been successful, Jean would have been the team boss and I probably would have been second-in-command. It was a special chance, a once-in-a-lifetime chance.” 

Alesi recalls what happened next with Akiyama: “Slowly, month after month, the guy disappeared, basically! As we went along, he was always on the limit for the payments that he was supposed to be making. He was paying, then not paying, then paying… He was playing a whole lot! Ron became very nervous about the whole thing. Not me; I had nothing engaged, you know, but of course I didn’t want to look stupid and to have my name on a project that failed before it had even started.”

Haga regrets that F1 entry was turned down, which culminated in Direxiv's backers losing interest

Photo by: Sutton Images

Price adds: “My wife died that year, and Shin came to the funeral with Misato, which I didn’t expect him to. It was nice of them… And then he disappeared! As Jean says, the money started coming in dribs and drabs, I’d have to keep reminding him, and then it got to the stage where Shin didn’t answer anything. I tried getting hold of him through Misato and some other people who worked with him, but nobody seemed to know what was going on. It took me by surprise when the money dried up. It came as a shock.”

Price says this vanishing act left him short by €900,000, causing him to scramble a deal together to run Vitaly Petrov for the second half of the GP2 season at the expense of Clivio Piccione. 

Alesi adds: “Unlike David, I didn’t have anything to lose apart from my image being connected to this. David had his team, his business, and running his two GP2 cars on this money. So, for sure, it was more painful for him than for me when money stopped being paid.” 

Alesi remembers another bizarre episode that summed up the disintegration of the project: “They took a huge boat to Monaco and Shin never showed up; he just wasn’t there. I spoke with Misato and she just said, ‘You can take it’, and I say, ‘Of course, thank you, but Shin will come and we can talk about the situation?’ and she said, ‘No, no, just use it as your guest room.’ So I was alone on a 60-metre yacht – like a billionaire!”

For a company that was determined to “stamp its mark on the racing industry”, it simply evaporated with barely a trace – along with its owner, Akiyama.

“We don’t know if he’s dead or hiding in another country – he just completely disappeared,” concludes Alesi. “Perhaps the best thing is that he disappeared before we even started the F1 team.”

Price adds: “To be honest, I don’t really know what Direxiv was. I didn’t know then what Shin did… and I still don’t now.”

Direxiv's backer Akiyama disappeared without a trace and ended his motorsport involvement

Photo by: GP2 Media Service