Honda’s First F1 Car Ever Will Roar Again at Laguna Seca

Today marks exactly 60 years since Honda entered its first Formula 1 race. To celebrate the momentous occasion, the Japanese automaker is bringing its famed Honda RA272 F1 car to the States, where it will participate in the 2024 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca. The single-seater is fresh off a run at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where Japanese F1 driver Yuki Tsunoda chucked it up the 11th Duke of Richmond’s famous driveway.

The RA272 is a mighty important car and one that is not often seen in action, so if you plan on attending the Monterey Car Week festivities, I highly recommend swinging by the track on Saturday, Aug. 17. The V12-powered race car will be driven by Honda’s heritage test driver Hikaru Miyagi, and I can guarantee you’ll want to hear its song as it nears its 13,000 rpm redline. While it won’t be racing directly against other historic F1 cars—this is a car straight out of Honda’s museum, after all—it will do several exhibition laps around the famous circuit.

After building small engines, motorized bicycles, scooters, and eventually championship-winning racing bikes, Honda jumped into truck and car manufacturing in the early ’60s. Soichiro Honda, a big supporter of motorsport and a big racer himself, entered the RA272 in its first F1 race at the 1964 German Grand Prix; back then held at the Nürburgring. The car qualified near the back of the grid but managed to finish 13th place at the hands of American racer Ronnie Bucknum. John Surtees won that race behind the wheel of his Ferrari.

A year later, however, at the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix held at the Autodromo Magdalena Mixhuca, the RA272 clinched its first F1 victory for Honda. By then, the team ran two race cars and qualified third and 10th place on Saturday. Come race day, it was the No. 11 of Richie Ginther that won the race and beat legendary names like Dan Gurney in a Brabham-Climax, Pedro Rodriguez and Lorenzo Bandini in their Ferraris and even Graham Hill in a BRM. Bucknum finished 5th in the No. 12 Honda, putting both RA272s in the top five.

Fun facts: that Mexican circuit was later renamed the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in honor of the brothers Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez, Mexico’s first F1 drivers. The brothers raced for top teams in America and Europe, including Ferrari, Maserati, and also Porsche in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The other fact is less impressive, but I was actually born at a hospital near that racetrack a little over two decades later also during the Mexican GP weekend.

Honda has come a long way since its first-ever victory, and there’s no better proof of that than its current dominance in the sport with Red Bull Racing. Since it entered the sport in 1964, Honda has powered eight F1 Constructors’ Championships and helped deliver many more Drivers’ Championships for the likes of Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost, and Max Verstappen.

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