The first thing you notice is its beauty, but the first thing you feel is Really Be careful of noise.
It’s Sunday morning at Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Hours later, Lando Norris would win the Mexican Grand Prix, becoming the first driver in hybrid-era F1 history to change the championship lead within the final five races.
Sixty years ago this weekend, Richie Ginther held his own masterclass at the same venue, leading the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix from start to finish. This was Honda’s first F1 victory in its short history. And now, sitting in a special pit box just in front of Hiroki Tsunoda’s garage is the car in which Ginther did it, a Honda RA272, dwarfed by the RB21 in the stands just a few feet behind.
The exterior is not very complex, even by the standards of the time. The minimalist feel is accentuated by the cool Japanese flag-inspired livery, which is almost completely white except for a large red circle across the nose.
Within minutes, Tsunoda would be nestling into the tiny cockpit and sending the RA272 out onto the track to commemorate a major milestone in Honda’s motorsport history. That means it’s time to start. A dedicated team of mechanics, dressed in period-style gear, remove the engine cover to reveal one of the car’s trademark features. At a time when V8s were considered the standard (although Ferrari sometimes raced flat-12s, including in Mexico ’65), Honda opted for a transversely mounted 1.5-liter V12. It’s a configuration that Honda engineers hope will deliver more peak power thanks to smaller moving parts and higher rotational speeds. Honda’s V12 was the gold standard of F1’s 1.5-litre era.
The mechanics milled around for a while, then suddenly the pit lane was filled with a series of loud metallic thuds as the engine, called RA272E, cleared its throat and let out a distorted trumpet. Several mechanics from the Ferrari garage next door came over with cell phones out to record video. F1 cars are now exponentially more sophisticated, but some things are beyond technology.
Once the engine cover is back on and Tsunoda sits in place, the engine roars a few times as I feather the throttle and the RA272 heads down the pit lane, following the tracks of its 60-year-old wheels.
The 1965 Mexican Grand Prix was a strange race. This was the last of the season and the last for the 1.5-liter engine formula ahead of the transition to 3-liter regulations in 1966. The cars on the grid would be outdated as soon as they crossed the finish line, and with the World Championship already settled in Jim Clark’s favor at Monza two races earlier (despite Clark dropping out with a fuel pump problem), one report that day suggested that not all teams arrived in Mexico with their eyes fully on the ball.
But Honda came prepared for Bear. Ginther and compatriot Ronnie Bucknam held additional practice sessions from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for three days before the first official practice session as the Honda team, visiting the 7,000-foot circuit for the first time, struggled with fuel mixtures and tried to resolve problems with the injection system.
Once the ‘proper’ running started, the RA272 was fast, with both drivers posting laps in the 1 minute 57 second to 1 minute 58 second range. This was lap record territory at the time. At one point the drivers swapped cars and both improved their times on the other car. For the rest of the field, the experience of getting dusted down the long main straight was a harbinger of things to come.
The next day was warmer, but the Honda’s pace was still good and both drivers were quick again after changing cars, with Ginther in third place at the end of qualifying with a time of 1 minute 56.48 seconds, 0.31 seconds off Clark’s pole time and just 0.07 seconds behind Dan Gurney’s Brabham. Bucknum started 10th.
Clear visibility of Clark and Gurney’s track did not continue until the first corner. Ginther passed both of them at the start and took the lead, which he held until the checkered flag, but not without some scares. The charging Gurney gradually cut his seven-second half-distance lead to less than four seconds, forcing Ginther to step up in response. The two men broke lap records several times, with Gurney finally breaking the record with a time of 1 minute, 55.84 seconds. However, it was a disappointing result. Ginther finished 2.89 seconds clear of his rival, while third place Mike Spence was almost a minute ahead in his Lotus.
After the race, Honda team manager Yoshio Nakamura sent a message to the company’s headquarters in Tokyo: “Veni, vidi, viti,” the New York Times reported with a mediocre headline. “Ginther supports Honda. Victory in Mexico City is thanks to tuning.” – pointed out that the driver who was once described as “a happy little guy with a bright future in the auto racing industry” is now “a happy little guy with a great chance to become world champion”.
Ginther celebrates winning the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix. This was the first GP win for himself, Honda and Goodyear, but in Ginther’s case it would be his only victory. Getty Images
Frank M. Blank, the Times’ pioneering motorsports writer, was wrong on that last point – Ginther’s first win was also his last, but Honda and Goodyear, who also won their first Grand Prix race, had much more success in store. This screaming little white car never raced again, but it inspired many dreams for its creators on the other side of the world for decades to come.
“When Honda was a small company, it was a very small company. Our founder, Soichiro Honda, believed that in order to make our presence felt, we needed to compete in top-category races,” said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe, who was in Mexico for the 60th World Championship.th Anniversary last weekend.
For Honda, which started out as a motorcycle manufacturer, that meant stepping into motorsport through the famous Isle of Man TT race, making its debut in 1959 with the RC142 bike and winning the Manufacturer’s Team Award. The race two years later was won by Mike Hailwood.
Having made his name on two wheels, Soichiro Honda’s next goal was to do the same on four wheels. In 1962, he decided to enter Formula One. It was a bold choice for a manufacturer that had not yet released a road car. (It appeared in 1963).
“Everyone was surprised by this,” Mibe says. “The company employees were amazed, and a year later (Honda debuted in Germany in 1964) we got our first victory here in Mexico.
“In 2026, we will be competing again as a works team. (However) we are going to change the team. We are going to introduce green cars.” (Ed.: Honda is currently partnering with Red Bull, but plans to become a works supplier to Aston Martin next year).
In Mr. Mibe’s words, the word “again” does the unglamorous heavy lifting. Like most manufacturers, Honda’s factory participation in F1 has been cyclical, with its last full works program lasting from 2015, when it initially partnered with McLaren, until switching to Red Bull – until 2021.
Honda’s last full factory F1 program ended in 2021 (pictured above), but they have continued to partner with Red Bull on powertrains. He will return as a works entry for Aston Martin next year. Bryn Lennon/Getty Images
Its resurgence comes at a time when justifying a worldwide motorsport program is much more complicated than in years past. Soichiro Honda was able to get the green light for Honda’s first F1 program simply because he wanted it. Today, manufacturers have to weigh obvious factors such as cost against broader corporate priorities (Honda’s previous exit from F1 was driven by a desire to focus on zero-emission technologies such as electrification and hydrogen), as well as global considerations such as politics and the environment.
So while racing is in Honda’s DNA, actually participating in it is an exercise in balancing Honda’s heritage and spirit against the reality of acting in the broader interests of a multinational company.
“Next year we will be calling it the ‘fifth generation’ (of racing),” Mibe said. “We’ve joined, we’ve quit, we’ve joined again next year…Each generation of CEOs has said racing costs a lot of money, so sometimes they quit to focus on the business.
“But all of us at Honda recognize that we have this (racing) DNA. That’s why we decided to bring this fifth generation back into F1. We want this generation to be stable. That’s why HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) is working on its own to focus on stability. And Mr. Watanabe.” (Editor: Koji Watanabe, HRC President and CEO) We put a lot of effort into making that happen. ”
“The goal is not to create six generations,” Watanabe added with a laugh.
Achieving this goal primarily requires controlling costs. HRC is actively working to develop its performance parts division, but it will take more than that to cover the huge costs required to be competitive in F1.
The 1965 Mexican Grand Prix-winning Honda RA272 was the guest of honor at last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, where it achieved its historic victory 60 years ago. Colin McMaster/Getty Images
“F1 is the most expensive race in the world,” Mibe said. “But we are discussing regulations to control the amount of money we use. F1 is high technology so we can’t cut it significantly. We need to keep developing new technology, so we need to find a balance. It’s difficult to meet the cost cap, so we need to manage our resources to deal with that and stay competitive. I think that’s going to be a new challenge for us.”
On paper, Honda’s fifth generation looks like it has all the makings to be exciting. Aston Martin has made a high-profile move to sign Adrian Newey, who has been leading the development of the 2026 car, in preparation for a reset of F1’s technical regulations. His arrival was the sharp tip of a broader upgrade of the team’s design and engineering capabilities over the past 12 to 18 months.
And Aston Martin’s recently opened 400,000 sq ft AMF1 Team Technology Campus is a three-building facility in Silverstone that houses all of the team’s design, engineering and manufacturing resources, including a new wind tunnel.
All of this needs to be taken into account before considering Honda itself and the power that the engine manufacturer has already achieved with 89 wins, 223 podiums, 6 drivers’ championships and 6 constructors’ titles. (Furthermore, he won three GPs as a full-entrant, with John Surtees winning at Monza in 1967 in an Eric Broadley-designed ‘Hondra’ RA300, and following Ginther’s early success, Jenson Button brought his RA106 to light at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix almost 40 years later).
The answer to how all of the possibilities on paper will translate to the circuit will begin to be answered at Albert Park next March. That’s when the story begins as an upstart Asian manufacturer, a Hollywood-born “happy little guy” known for his talent for testing and development, and cute cars with equally cute but advanced engines prepare for their next chapter as Aston Martin Aramco Honda. The RA272 has fulfilled Soichiro Honda’s dream, but the company he built still has much more to pursue.
