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| May.31.1999 "F1GP-NIPPON CHALLENGE" STATUS REPORT | ||
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No.2 To achieve this, DOME tried hard to get the co-operation of MUGEN. But MUGEN at the time needed to obtain good results and co-operate with a strong team. And as we could not create an ideal situation which would satisfy its president Mr Honda, MUGEN decided to undertake a contract to supply engines exclusively to JORDAN which meant that it became difficult for us to get MUGEN engines for the time being. Under these circumstances, we changed our focus towards HONDA as their F1 GP comeback has become more and more probable. We submitted a proposal called 'The future 30 years ago - F1GP Proposals in order to meet year 2000 full of hope' to Honda, in which we suggested DOME and MUGEN's participation as a preliminary trial towards investigating the process for the following All-HONDA participation. We also approached many related parties concerning this possibility. HONDA then announced an F1GP comeback with their own team. This put the MUGEN engine at the edge of survival, and the DOME and MUGEN team concept lost all probability. Here I must clarify, in order to avoid any misunderstanding. Of course, all of the above stories are purely my own personal observations. I was one-sidedly making suggestions to MUGEN and HONDA with my own scenarios in mind. We were not in any repeated discussions and neither MUGEN nor HONDA made any comments regarding its possibility. Also, the reason why I was so focused towards MUGEN engines was because I was very obliged to have been able to borrow an important MUGEN engine for our mere prototype 'DOME F105', although it was not free of charge (sorry! as 99% of the general public believe that it was free of charge, I could not help but explain). There was no special agreement or arrangement between the MUGEN president Mr. Honda and myself. Now it looks like I was running with my own very biased belief, but at the time I really believed that what I was suggesting was necessary for Japan to 'compete properly' with others and 'a necessary process as a precondition for an ALL HONDA team launch'. I therefore did not hesitate to share my belief with others. Or, to be honest with you, I was so happy to learn about HONDA's move towards F1GP as this coincided with our F1 chassis development technique finalisation, thinking how lucky we were, what good timing it was. However I could not predict that things would turn out the way they did. Although it is true that due to HONDA's announcement we will be unable to get engines for a while, it also brought us new hope in a different context. The most important aspect of this news for us was the phrase; A challenge 'including the development and manufacturing of a chassis, and team management', which had been rumoured for a while. It is exactly the same as my belief, 'It's about time we faced the real challenge', which I kept on saying like a Buddhist prayer. It was especially great news for us that HONDA would achieve our dream on behalf of ourselves, who did not have the capability to do so. The basic concept of our 'F1 GP Challenge of NIPPON' was that we need to stop the conventional way of competing in F1 by relying on the existing technology from foreign countries, and that we need to compete by developing technology ourselves. This was now to be achieved by HONDA. It meant that our dream was fulfilled in one way and that we had lost our objective in another. |
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