22 replies to this topic

[aportinga]

Just watching the 1993 season - I was in college at the time and had no cable TV from 1992-1993. Also the college I was at was basically farmland for miles and miles out so there was no publications I could grab to keep me up to date. Once an awhile I could jump into the commons area where there was cable and watch a few races - but not enough to really keep up with back stories.

 

All that said, what happened with The McLaren/Honda partnership? Did Ron Dennis not prepare the team will enough to keep the team on pace at the top of the field?

 

I recall the Lamborghini deal/ Peugeot deal. That nasty 1995 double wing car from 1995 that Mansell could not fit in and so on.

 

Seemed like a folly of mistakes, poor planning and so on that really left the team no where near the front after 1993 and not until Mercedes jumped back in, was it really a threat for the Championship(s).

 

Converesly - looking at RBR today, it seems they got things right.

 

So for McLaren, was it just the times and a lack of technical & manufacture investment across the board? Bad planning from Dennis?

 

 

[pacificquay]

Honda wanted to pull out because they'd had 4 seasons of winning everything and the credit all went to McLaren, Prost and Senna.

[aportinga]

Of course but why such a dip for McLaren? RD was widely respected as a master-mind back then. One would think they'd have a propper deal lined up with a manufacture and not fall so far back for so long.

 

I'm thinking perhaps a combination of personel changes, not being prepared and marketplace.

[arttidesco]

Once Honda had dropped out the engine to have was a Renault and Williams had an exclusive deal to run those until Benetton was given the nod for a supply of French V10's. 

[Gene]

I remember Ron Tauranac telling me he advised Honda CEO Kawamoto to "get out of F1 while your on top."

After all of their success with McLaren and Senna there was no place for them to go but down.

 

[Nathan]

Honda wasn't a big fan of the F1 car project and other TAG activities led Honda to believe McLaren were losing focus.  Combined with having won everything and the fact Aryton openly said he was off to Williams as soon as a seat came open gave a dim view of the future.  At this point Honda was spending something around 40 million pounds per year.

 

Once Honda had dropped out the engine to have was a Renault and Williams had an exclusive deal to run those until Benetton was given the nod for a supply of French V10's. 

 

Kinda of.  Williams and Ligier had Renault deals, Williams was for the latest spec.  Flavio bought Liger and shifted the engines to Benetton for '95.  Renault then felt obliged to give both teams equal spec.

[Risil]

McLaren had dropped behind Williams by late 1991, were possibly behind Benetton by 1992 and Ferrari by 1994. It's too simplistic to reduce the story to individual designers (although they surely had more influence than they do today) but Adrian Newey and Patrick Head were building the Williams cars, Rory Byrne, Frank Dernie and Ross Brawn the Benettons, and John Barnard the Ferraris. McLaren weren't manned to compete with that until the end of the nineties. On that basis I think Nathan has a good point that McLaren's focus may have been drifting from F1 and the top engineering talent -- at least on the chassis side -- was being snapped up by others.

 

Ron Dennis was stuck with customer Ford Cosworth engines in 1993 but like you say, there were only two engines to have that year and those were a works Renault or a works Ford, and they were contractually tied to Williams and Benetton. You could turn it round and say that Dennis did very well to extract a better spec of Ford by the end of 1993, and managed to get two major car companies (Chrysler and Peugeot) to compete for a McLaren contract in 1994.

 

At the risk of sounding too philosophical, from one decade to the next you always see success ebb and flow between the different Grand Prix teams. Nobody stays on top forever and once something has broken a winning team, success can be very elusive to regain. Credit to Ron Dennis and McLaren of that era that they repeatedly managed to emerge from those downturns with the next new idea.

[Gene]

I seem to remember hearing on the F1 gossip vine, Ford told Ron D. that Ford motors and Michael Andretti came only as a "package deal".

Of course that leads to a whole other F1 story!

[Charlieman]

There are some similarities and differences with Honda's withdrawal from Williams following Frank's accident. Honda transferred support to Lotus, forcing Williams to use customer engines whilst they sought a manufacturer deal. For both McLaren and Williams, loss of the manufacturer engine was a big hit temporarily. 

 

How far was McLaren's work on active suspension and other high tech developments circa 1992?

[aportinga]

Honda wasn't a big fan of the F1 car project and other TAG activities led Honda to believe McLaren were losing focus.  Combined with having won everything and the fact Aryton openly said he was off to Williams as soon as a seat came open gave a dim view of the future.  At this point Honda was spending something around 40 million pounds per year.

 

 

Kinda of.  Williams and Ligier had Renault deals, Williams was for the latest spec.  Flavio bought Liger and shifted the engines to Benetton for '95.  Renault then felt obliged to give both teams equal spec.

 

The Flavio part I completely forgot - thanks for that!

[Gene]

After my last post, I got thinking a bit more about what might be added value to this thread!

I hope it is!

 

The story I heard was Honda didn’t think someone in a wheelchair could successfully run a F1 team, so they broke their contract with Williams. Boy did they get that one wrong, Honda didn’t realize about the type AAA personality of Frank Williams! Loosing Honda forced Williams to revert to Judd power and secretly work on the Renault engine deal. The story goes Honda was very embarrassed about how they treated Williams, especially after seeing the successes of the team and Renault. Despite knowing Williams would never do business with them again, when ever the “F1 Circus” went to Japan, at the airport waiting for Frank to get off the Williams jet was a Honda corporate helicopter with a staff to take care of all his needs while he was in the country. This was Honda’s “penance” and letting Frank know,”Aaaah Soooo, we screwed up!”

 

The other is an account of Kawamoto‘s response to Ron T.’s advice. I think it adds to understanding Honda’s original exit and now possible return to F1. Kawamoto stated Honda goes racing for two reasons. The first is, it helps Honda drive their arch rivals, Toyota, crazy! Despite both being ‘high tech’ companies, if you ask someone to name a high tech Japanese auto maker, they most likely will answer “Honda.” The second reason is much more about creating Honda’s high tech corporate culture. Kawamoto described the foundation of Japanese society as “fit in” and “don’t standout and make waves.” Unfortunately that culture destroys innovators and innovation. So, any young engineering graduates, that Honda thinks has a real future with the company, are hired and immediately sent off to the competition department. There they are forced to sink or swim in an environment whose success is all about innovation in highly compressed time frames. After a few years being retrained (reprogrammed!), Honda plucks them out and sends them off to design cars like Acuras. As confirmation of the process’s success, Kawamoto claimed you could park all the Japanese produced cars in a field with all their badges removed, but you could still easily pick out the Hondas. Oh and keep in mind, Kawamoto started out with Honda as the “tea boy” on the original F1 project!

Edited by Gene, 18 October 2022 - 14:42.

[JtP2]

The Williams Honda engine supply followed Piquet a thing Frank didn't realise. The MaClaren Honda deal was Senna driven a fact Senna didn't realise when he flipped the coin on his salary.

[arttidesco]

The Williams Honda engine supply followed Piquet a thing Frank didn't realise. The MaClaren Honda deal was Senna driven a fact Senna didn't realise when he flipped the coin on his salary.

 

Frank realised very well that Piquet came with Honda engines and Frank was quite happy to make Piquet sweat for his money, all Frank was concerned with was that Williams should win the races and the constructors championship.

[small block]

The Williams Honda engine supply followed Piquet a thing Frank didn't realise. The MaClaren Honda deal was Senna driven a fact Senna didn't realise when he flipped the coin on his salary.

They must have followed Piquet so fast that they arrived at Williams more than a year before he did

[dolomite]

I seem to remember hearing on the F1 gossip vine, Ford told Ron D. that Ford motors and Michael Andretti came only as a "package deal".

Of course that leads to a whole other F1 story!

I thought it was the case that when Michael originally signed for Mclaren he was expecting to be driving a Honda powered car in 93. 

[pacificquay]

He was. The Ford thing was unconnected.

[hogstar]

Frank realised very well that Piquet came with Honda engines and Frank was quite happy to make Piquet sweat for his money, all Frank was concerned with was that Williams should win the races and the constructors championship.

 

Honda insisted that Williams take Nakajima on, which Head is on record that they - unsurprisingly - refused. Plus Mansell was under contract for '88. I think they still could have ran them for one more year, but as a non work team. Mansell then claims Frank sold the contract for 26M - dollars or pounds I'm not sure.

[man]

Apparently, Senna knew Honda intended to quit F1 before McLaren did.

1988 would have been so much more interesting if Honda remained with Williams together with McLaren rather than supplying Lotus. I've read/heard that Patrick Head wasn't all that impressed with the MP4/4 and he felt that Williams could have done as well as the Woking outfit for 1988 with the aid of Honda power.


One of the great "What if's"in my book is what would have happened if Herbert hadn't been punted off by Irvine at the first chicane at Monza 1994. Could he have challenged for victory?

[king_crud]

Although the performance wasn't as good as previous years, i think the 1993 McLaren is the best looking F1 car of all time

[Zippel]

Was there any intention to provide McLaren a supply of the Mugen V10 in 93, which was basically the old Honda V10? I never hear that was an option but logically you'd think it would have been, if only as a place holder for a year and Honda not leaving McLaren completely high and dry.

[man]

Was there any intention to provide McLaren a supply of the Mugen V10 in 93, which was basically the old Honda V10? I never hear that was an option but logically you'd think it would have been, if only as a place holder for a year and Honda not leaving McLaren completely high and dry.

Not as far as I'm aware. The Mugen Honda was considered to be very heavy by this point of its development.

[john aston]

And very, very  noisy as my perforated left eardrum will attest.... Pedro Diniz- J'accuse    

[Emery0323]

Another consideration was the persistent recession in Japan, which began in the early 1990's.   After the boom years of the 1980's, all the Japanese automakers were facing pressure on profitability when the Japanese stock market and real estate markets dropped in the early 1990's.      The F1 Racing program was a major cost center as the economic conditions got worse.

As has been mentioned upthread, their withdrawal after 1992  meant they could go out on top after winning 5 straight F1 championships in 1987-1991.

 

I recall a quote from Ron Dennis somewhere - He said that "Frank had it right and I had it wrong" in terms of spending all the money on the car rather than the driver.

Ron felt he could throw all the money at retaining Senna, whereas Frank William treated his WDC winning drivers as interchangeable parts who could be swapped out once they started costing too much.

It did work well for Frank - He won 4 WDC's  with Piquet, Mansell, Prost, and Damon Hill,  all of whom departed the team the following season for commercial reasons (at least in part).