

History records that Honda quit Formula 1 at the end of the 2008 season, but Japanese engineers continued to work in secret and were very advanced on a 2009 car design and beyond. Ultimately this secret R&D project lead to the firm creating a 2014 specification hybrid power unit which will be used by McLaren in 2015 but in between some fascinating work was conducted.

When Honda quit Formula 1 at the end of the 2008 season the prospects for the team behind it based at Brackley were bleak. Through the winter Ross Brawn called in all the favours available and a few more to put a new team together. Using the unfinished 2009 Honda designs as a basis the new team pushed ahead. This was not a straightforward task, the Brawn team used a Mercedes V8 engine instead of the Honda V8 that the car had initially been designed for, meaning that the rear of the monocoque had to be changed significantly. History records that Brawn BGP001 won both drivers and constructors titles in 2009 before the team morphed into Mercedes GP.

Rarely is anything discussed about the Honda RA109, the general understanding being that the car became the Brawn BGP001 and to an extent that is true, but there was still a distinct and separate RA109 design which is revealed in this article.

During Honda’s whole ‘3rd era’ F1 project it had multiple R&D teams working on car design. In reality there were three main Honda development teams, the main one being at the Honda F1 team in Brackley, England, but in addition to that there was Honda R&D in Tochigi, Japan and finally the smaller HRD facility in Bracknell, England which was primarily concerned with the engines.

When Honda decided to withdraw from F1, the R&D department at Brackley stopped work, when it restarted it was focussed on creating the Brawn BGP001, but the R&D team in Tochigi had continued with the RA109 for much longer than anyone realised.

Honda RA109: Overview



The Honda RA109 was on the face of it a conventional 2009 car design as this wind tunnel model shows. It has pushrod front and rear suspension, the simplified bodywork as mandated by the 2009-2013 aerodynamic regulations, complete with wide front wing and narrow rear. The power would have of course come from Honda’s V8 F1 engine and the transmission would have been a seven speed seamless shift unit. A quick look at the wind tunnel model above (thought to be in the DOME wind tunnel) reveals that the overall design of the RA109 is visually quite different to the Brawn BGP001.

In part 2 we take a look at the aerodynamic details of the Honda RA109 and how it differed to the Brawn.

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Aerodynamic development

Part 3: Mechanical systems

Part 4: Footnotes

PART 2: HONDA RA109 AERODYNAMIC DEVELOPMENT

