HONDA The Power of Dreams

In 1987, Satoru Nakajima became the first Japanese full-time F1 driver. Nakajima had been in charge of Honda’s F1 engine development testing in Japan since 1984, but in 1986, the year prior to his F1 debut, he raced in All Japan F2 and International F3000, which in hindsight was his preparation to race in F1.

Honda’s support was well known to be a major factor in Nakajima’s entry into F1, but it was also true that Lotus saw an opportunity to win the title as they believed Honda’s engines had superior potential over Renault engines, and their number one driver was Ayrton Senna. Honda was also aiming to expand its supply capacity based on its F2 days, and was interested in Senna, regarded as a potential next-generation champion.

On the other hand, Williams, another team using Honda engines and the previous year’s constructors’ champion, had the bitter experience of narrowly missing out on the drivers’ title, so they introduced the FW11B, an improved version of the FW11 with superior overall performance. The team was eager to win both titles.

The Lotus 99T, which was powered by the RA167E engine, was equipped with active suspension. The monocoque had already been made of integrally molded carbon composite from the previous 98T, but the 99T attempted to gain an advantage over the competition by introducing an active suspension that maintained a constant attitude (ride height) despite road conditions and attitude changes due to inertia.

As the actuator units were very expensive and the yield was poor, it had been suggested that the 99T, which was publicly announced as an active suspension car for every race, may have raced in some GPs with conventional passive suspension.

The difficulty with active suspension is that it cannot be achieved by feedback control based on input, but mainly by feed-forward control that anticipates. In this sense, driving on a circuit, where conditions could be monitored, was a relatively easy environment for the active suspension system to work.

One episode related to the active suspension was that the car’s efforts to maintain ideal ground camber at all times prevented the qualifying tires, which generated heat partially by friction with the track surface, from functioning ideally, making it difficult for the team to qualify at the top of the grid. In modern terms, this would be called tire-friendly suspension, but it was not surprising that the best matching could not be obtained when running on tires developed for normal passive suspension.

With the Lotus 99T, the team finished 3rd in the constructors’ standings with 64 points in 1987. Senna won back-to-back victories at the low-speed tracks of Monaco and Detroit (which, so far, was the last win for Team Lotus), and was third in the standings with 57 points, while Nakajima scored 7 points. Although some modifications were made in the latter half of the season to the bodywork to improve aerodynamics and turbine layout closer to the Williams, the car itself was not inferior, but rather, the championship-winning Williams FW11B (12 poles and 9 wins) was far superior.

Honda's V6 turbocharged engine, which was the driving force behind this rapid advance, had a distributor-less direct ignition system, enabling a more nuanced response (control) to detonation (abnormal combustion) and more efficient use of the engine.

Although the maximum boost pressure was regulated to 4 bar this year due to mandatory installation of pop-off valves, the compression ratio could be raised from 7.4 to 8.2 through detonation control, and about 1,000 horsepower could be achieved at 12,000 rpm. (The previous year’s RA166E engine, which did not have boost pressure regulation, produced 1,100 horsepower at 11,800 rpm when boost pressure was raised to 5 bar for qualifying).

The following year, in 1988, Honda stopped supplying engines to Williams, and instead formed a partnership with McLaren, Senna’s new partner. The irony was that Honda, which excelled in turbocharging technology including basic research, was now dominating the other engine manufacturers.