Why Honda love the TT

Honda and the TT
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
How Honda
ruled the Island
The TT started Honda’s obsession with
motorsport, provoked the formation of HRC
and generated some of the company’s
finest motorcycles. Here’s how
Priority for protection
www.araihelmet.eu
By John Westlake
PICS: HONDA, ALAMY, BAUER ARCHIVE
How it started: Naomi
Taniguchi riding a 125cc
Honda at the Isle of Man
TT in 1959. He finished
sixth and Honda took
the Constructors’ Prize
at their first attempt
How it’s going:
Michael Dunlop
takes a leisurely ride
through Bray Hill on
his way to winning the
2023 Superbike TT on
the Honda Fireblade
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Honda and the TT
The Honda team at their TT debut.
From left: riders Junzo Suzuki and
Giichi Suzuki, team leader Kiyoshi
Kawashima, riders Naomi Taniguchi
and Teisuke Tanaka, rider and
interpreter Bill Hunt, and chief of
maintenance Hisaichi Sekiguchi
‘Anyone who was a respectable engineer
wouldn’t have considered getting into
anything so reckless as competing in
the Isle of Man TT. None of us were
respectable, from the Old Man down’
To understand how a vast Japanese
motorcycle manufacturer became
obsessed with a race around a tiny island
in the Irish Sea, we must return to 1953.
Soichiro Honda – who had founded the
Honda Motor Company four years earlier – is on a
shopping trip in England, looking at machine tools for
his factory back home. Then, as a lifelong race fan, he
decides to visit the Isle of Man to watch the TT – then
a round of the Grand Prix world championship. It was
a decision that gave his company a dedicated focus
that continues to this day.
What he witnessed was exactly the challenge he
wanted for Honda – a test of speed, skill and reliability
so extreme that TT aficionados regarded him as a
deluded eccentric (that’s the polite, non-racist
version). But he was convinced – and so the TT
obsession began. In 1954 he wrote a letter to his staff
that was the equivalent of JFK’s ‘we’re going to put a
man on the moon’ speech. It’s too long to reproduce in
full, but these highlights give a sense of the man and
his determination:
Now that we are equipped with a production system in
which I have absolute confidence, the time of opportunity
has arrived. I have reached the firm decision to enter the
TT races next year. Never before has a Japanese entered
this race with a motorcycle made in Japan… I will fabricate
a 250cc racer, and as the representative of our Honda
Motor Co., I will send it out into the spotlight of the world.
I am confident that this vehicle can reach speeds
exceeding 180km/h (112mph)… To achieve this, it must
be supported by meticulous attention to detail and
unremitting effort. Let us bring together the full strength
of Honda Motor Co. to win through to this glorious
achievement. The future of Honda Motor Co. depends
on this, and the burden rests on your shoulders.
Work began on the engine but it soon became
apparent the company needed a racing department.
A young engineer called Kiyoshi Kawashima was in
charge of the TT project and he later said: ‘We started
working on a prototype engine, which was finished
by the end of the year. However, the Old Man [ie,
Soichiro Honda] was being troublesome, people all
around us were being troublesome, everybody was
telling us what to do, and the situation was a mess.
I told them, please make us into a specialised unit or
125cc, five cylinders, eight
gears. The RC149 was typical
of Honda’s nonconformist
approach. Here’s Mike Hailwood
as smooth and fast as ever on it
at the TT in 1966. It made 30bhp
at 18,000rpm – so just imagine
the howl from those pipes
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Honda and the TT
I won’t go on with this, and the response was simple:
“Do it!”’ And so the TT sparked the creation of the
Honda Racing Corporation (HRC), although it
wasn’t called that until much later.
It also set the template for HRC’s fearless attitude
– the creation of Honda’s big-bang NSR500,
oval‐pistoned NR500, and the original V5 RC211V
MotoGP bike can be traced back to the way
Kawashima’s TT team operated. ‘All of us were
nonconformists in one way or another,’ he said.
‘Anyone who was a respectable engineer wouldn’t
have considered getting into anything so reckless as
competing in the Isle of Man TT. None of us were
respectable, from the Old Man down.’
They were young, too. ‘Around that time, there
were a lot of engineers who were in their 30s and 40s,’
said Kawashima. ‘But the company went ahead and
gave the job to a bunch of young guys instead. We
were all in our 20s. Although we were given a lot of
responsibility, we were so young that it didn’t scare us.’
Incidentally, the practice of putting young hotshot
engineers straight into HRC continues to this day and
groups of them still get sent to the TT.
‘When I was there, five to ten up-and-coming
engineers fresh out of university were sent over every
year so they could learn what it was all about,’ says
Dave Hancock, who was variously a Honda sales chief,
team boss and R&D rider. ‘No other manufacturer did
that. It was part of their induction process.’
‘TT is in Honda’s hearts
– you go to the Honda
museum in Japan and
it’s the story of the TT’
By 1959 – admittedly four years later than Soichiro
hoped – the team was ready and nine staff headed off
to the Isle of Man a month before the races to get their
four bikes ready. That first trip is worthy of a film
– they spoke little English, didn’t like the food and
were beset by technical problems. Tyres disintegrated,
chains fell apart, spark plugs lost their electrodes,
pistons holed… but the 125cc engines held together.
And the race results were staggering. An MV won,
an MZ was second and a young Mike Hailwood came
third on a Ducati – no surprises there – but the
four-stroke, twin-cylinder Hondas came in sixth,
seventh, eighth and 11th and the team took the
Constructors’ Prize. All the Honda engineers came
back determined to win a TT – and two years later
they did just that with Hailwood in the saddle.
Ever since, the TT has held a special place in the
heart of Honda management and has led to some
phenomenal efforts to win – as Hancock recalls.
‘In 1997 I was in Japan. Bob [Macmillan, Honda UK
boss] asked me to get a meeting with Nakamoto-san
[HRC president] and ask for a factory RVF for Phillip
McCallen at the TT. Nakamoto-san said he didn’t have
one, then hesitated before saying he’d build us one.
He went over to the whiteboard and wrote down loads
Onboard cameras haven’t always been
dinky. Here’s Joey Dunlop showing off
the unit he lugged round for a practice lap
on the RS850R in 1983. He then narrated
it afterwards. Type ‘V Four Victory’ into
YouTube – distractions don’t get better
Phillip McCallen on the RC30 in
1993. He won the Senior TT by
45 seconds – a fitting send-off
for the RC30 in its final year of
competition. Splatted flies a
sure sign it was a warm one
RVF750R, factory code name
RC45.Honda’s new king of the
mountain arrived in 1994 when a
move to Superbike rules meant
the RC30 was no longer eligible.
Steve Hislop gave the RC45 its
first wins, in the F1 and Senior
TTs. Here’s Hizzy and the RC45
hitting the cat walk in some style
Fireblade and the TT: the bangers
and mash of roads racing. Since
2006 it’s taken more than 20 TT
wins and was the first bike to
break the 130mph lap barrier. And
by the time you read this it could
have given Honda their 200th win
of figures and said “it’ll cost Honda UK £250,000”.
I phoned Bob and he just said “we need it”, so I told
Nakamoto-san yes and started packing up. Then he
says “but you need spare parts” and started writing on
the whiteboard again. That was another £175,000. So
Phillip’s engine cost £425,000. No one else would have
the determination or budget to do something like that.’
McCallen won the F1 and Senior (and also the
Production, on a Fireblade), so was it worth it? ‘Well,
even though it was an RVF, everyone linked it with the
VFR and it cemented the reliability of Hondas in
people’s minds,’ says Hancock. ‘That’s what we wanted.
And that’s what Mr Honda wanted all those years ago.’
It wasn’t just big budgets though. It was clear to
Hancock that Soichiro Honda had passed down his
TT obsession with concentrating on details. For
example, in 1998 the creator of the Fireblade, Tadeo
Baba, came over to the Island. But he was on more
than a sightseeing trip. ‘He blueprinted the engine in
Jim Moodie’s Sanyo Honda Fireblade,’ says Hancock.
‘Then, on the night before the race he gave a box to
Mick Grant, who was Jim’s team manager, and says
“please fit this chain to Jim’s Fireblade”. He had heard
about chains stretching, and said this would fix it.
‘Mick didn’t want to fit it because there was no time
to run it in, but it was Baba-san, so he did. Jim won the
race, and when he came in I put my foot under the
chain and it was as good as new. And then Baba says
to Mick: “Please can I have the chain back? I borrowed
it from the Suzuka 8 Hours bike and it’s very special.
No one knows I have it, so I have to put it back on the
shelf.” This was the level of detail senior engineers
would go to make sure they won the TT.’
The engineers’ devotion was apparent in other
ways. When John McGuinness was developing
Honda’s electric TT bike (which was run by Mugen, a
Honda offshoot set up by Soichiro’s son Hirotoshi) he
loved working with the young Japanese. ‘It was staffed
by really clever young engineers, just like the teams
were in the old days,’ says McGuinness. ‘And they were
so dedicated. I dropped the electric bike turning it
round once – it was a heavy thing – and one of the
engineers threw himself underneath it to stop it
getting damaged. Their dedication is something else.’
As Bike goes to press, that dedication has given
Honda 198 TT wins – by far the most of any
manufacturer – and has made TT heroes of dozens of
riders, from Hailwood to Joey Dunlop to McGuinness.
Given that McGuinness is still riding for Honda 27
years after he first piloted a TSR250 around the Island
in 1998, it seems fitting for him to have the last word
on the company’s obsession.
‘The TT is in Honda’s hearts – you go to the Honda
museum in Japan and it’s the story of the TT. And here
I am at my age [53 – Ed] still riding a factory Honda at
the TT and setting off number one. There’s something
about a factory Honda with number one on it, and I’m
riding it. Amazing.
‘I went away from Honda for a while [he rode for
Norton in 2018-19 –Ed] but I hated it. I came back in
2022 and it was like putting on my favourite pair of
slippers. I love the people, the place and the bikes.
It’s a special combination.’
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