In 1992, Honda Motor Company announced its withdrawal from Formula One after six uninterrupted years of success in the Constructors' Championship, first with the V6 Turbo engine used by Williams and McLaren, and then with the powerful naturally aspirated V10 and V12 engines used in the MP4s of Senna and Prost. Honda's intention was to focus exclusively on American IndyCar racing, as well as on Grand Prix motorcycles, a sector the Japanese giant had never neglected. However, in Tochigi, home of the company's Research & Development division, part of the corporate budget was allocated to engineers for the development of personal projects, aimed at maintaining high motivation and personal creative satisfaction.
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| HONDA RC F1 1.5X |
From this, a group of engineers led by Ken Hashimoto and Keinosuke Taki launched the Honda RC F1 project, with the goal of creating a fully functioning laboratory car, secretly hoping to bring the Honda brand back to the track as a constructor after almost twenty-five years of absence. The engineers worked on the project in their free time to avoid any official involvement from Honda, to the point that the media of the time dubbed the single-seater the Honda "after hours."
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| HONDA RC F1 1.5X |
The resulting car featured fairly traditional lines for the era and was largely inspired by the 1992 Footwork FA13, which was also powered by a Mugen-Honda engine that partially funded the project. It was a fully operational vehicle that even passed the FIA crash test, making it eligible to compete in the World Championship. The car, named the Honda RC F1 1.0X by Honda’s R&D department, was equipped with the Honda V12 RA121E engine used by McLaren in 1991.
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| HONDA RC F1 1.5X |
Unfortunately, this only version of the car was destroyed in the crash test, but a new version was already ready to hit the track. This was the 1.5X, featuring the more modern V12 RA122E/B engine, also used by McLaren in 1992, paired with a new six-speed semi-automatic transmission. The car complied with the new 1993 technical regulations and was tested on the Motegi circuit, owned by Honda, by its designers, engineers Hashimoto and Taki, to assess its structural performance. A testing program was even launched with Honda test driver Satoru Nakajima, who drove the new car in January 1994 at the Suzuka circuit. Following the regulatory changes prompted by the 1994 tragedies, a new version of the RC F1, called the 2.0X, was built in 1994 based on the rules that would come into effect in 1995.
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| HONDA RC F1 2.0X |
The 2.0X differed from previous versions in its engine, this time supplied by Mugen, its raised nose, and the presence of lateral deflectors. Most notably, it was fitted with grooved Bridgestone tires, which would not debut in Formula One until 1998. Despite the efforts of the two R&D engineers, Hashimoto and Taki, Honda’s management remained unconvinced of the project’s potential. As a result, it was definitively shelved without ever becoming an official commitment by the Japanese manufacturer. The single-seaters are now preserved in the Honda Collection Hall in Tokyo.
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