In Round 9 of the 2019 F1 season, the Austrian GP, Honda claimed its long-awaited first win of its fourth F1 era. On the podium with the winner Max Verstappen was Honda F1 Technical Director Toyoharu Tanabe, modest but joyous after receiving much applaud. Tanabe, a specialist, knows F1 well, having been involved in Honda’s F1 activities as a key engineer in the second, third, and fourth eras, and his experience and track record in the latest era led him to become the top on-site engineer in 2018.

“I have loved cars since I was small, and wanted to work for a car company. That’s why I studied mechanical engineering at University, and once I heard that Honda was returning to F1 just as I was graduating, I thought it sounded interesting, so I took the test and was lucky enough to join the company. I was assigned to Wako R&D and worked in mass-production engine development, but I told them, ‘I want to race,’ and was transferred to F1 engine development in 1986. I worked on endurance tests and pre-delivery checks. and in late 1986 I went to the tracks where I worked with the teams and drivers as a data engineer. I would take data from the car and analyze it, first to check the health and durability of the engine, and then to check the drivability of the car. I would then explain this to the drivers and listen to their requests.”

Tanabe had worked with top-level drivers such as Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, and Alain Prost, but he was most impressed with Ayrton Senna.

“Of all the drivers, Ayrton Senna impressed me the most. He would point out areas where the engine response, drivability, power, reliability, and everything else was not up to his standards in order to go fast. For example, he would ask us to do something with the data because the drivability was poor, and we would try our best by changing the settings and trying various things, and then Senna would test the car and evaluate it. If it was not fixed, he would say, ‘You didn't fix it,’ and if it was fixed, he would just say, ‘That’s good,’ and his lap times would improve. When an engine broke during a race, not only my engine, but when a Honda engine broke, instead of saying ‘Hi,’ Senna would ask, ‘How was that engine? What went wrong? What are you going to do about it?’ His need for a solution was insatiable. If the engine wasn’t better, he would ask how we were going to fix it for the next session. This would go on all race weekend, until the end of the race. Then, he would ask how we would fix the engine by the next race, and so on.”

Senna’s comments and demands on the car and engine were more frequent, and at a higher level, than any other driver. According to Tanabe, Senna’s sensitivity was truly astonishing:

“Senna was very accurate in what he said. We work based on data, but he gives us feedback as a driver, including his ‘sensors,’ which did not lie. We take data seriously. He, too, talked to us about the behavior of the car and the response of the engine sincerely. So, we were able to compare notes. He once amazed me by saying, ‘The throttle pedal is not fully open,’ and when we measured it, we found that the stroke was about 2 mm short. There is a term called 'Senna foot,' and when I first saw the data, Osamu Goto made a big deal about it, saying that there must have been noise on the throttle sensor, or that the sensor was wrong. When I examined the data carefully, he said, ‘No, no, Senna worked it out on his own.’ There were many other surprises, too. How could he drive that fast and give me such detailed feedback about where and how many laps he did? Many drivers have something similar, but with Senna, he took it up a notch.”

As Honda worked hard to meet Senna’s demands, Honda’s F1 engines improved.

“Senna was a young man, and he would make demands, and if we didn’t give him an answer, he would push us further, and we would have to repeat the process. He would not accept, ‘Take it easy.’ We had to go all the way. And fast, in time for his next run. Once a session was over, we had to have answers for the next session. If Day 1 was over, he expected answers by Day 2. Once a race finished, by the next. And so on. It was like doing homework, and he would be upset if we didn’t have the right answers. Through this repetition, I think we learned how to face races, with a sense of urgency that mistakes are absolutely unforgivable, to keep pushing to improve, and to work quickly. I believe that Senna instilled this in us. The whole team and I, personally, felt the same.”

Since 1990, Tanabe was Gerhard Berger’s engineer, contributing to Honda’s last victory in its second F1 era, in the final round of the 1992 season in Australia. In Honda’s third F1 era, he was Jenson Button’s engineer, sharing the joy of winning Round 3 of the 2006 season in Hungary. In the U.S., he was onsite as an engineer celebrating his part in Takuma Sato’s Indy 500 victory in 2017. He knows racing.

“Personally, I’ve had a truly fortunate racing career. Looking back, I think that I learned a lot of important things when I was a young engineer during the second F1 era, such as the tension and fear that even the slightest mistake could ruin the race, the density of thinking about nothing but the race for 24 hours a day, and the minute-by-minute working speed, which led to these fortunes and results. In that sense, I can only thank Senna for pushing us.”