Shuhei Nakamoto

Shuhei Nakamoto (中本 修平 "Shūhei Nakamoto", born 29 April 1957) is the Senior Technical Director for the Honda Formula One team.

Career

Nakamoto joined the Honda Racing Corporation in 1983 and his initial work was based around the corporations motorcycle racing operations at Honda Racing Corporation (HRC). By 1984, Nakamoto was already project leader on the design of the Honda RS125, RS250 production racing machines and by 1990 he had been moved up to the role of large project leader on both these machines.

Nakamoto continued to work with motorcycles, but moved to Honda F1 project in 2000. He gained multiple promotions up until 2002 when he became the race and test team manager for Honda Racing Developments Ltd. (HRD). Another promotion in 2003 led to him becoming engineering director for Honda Racing Developments Ltd., and he stayed in this role until 2006.

During 2006, Nakamoto got his big break being appointed the Senior Technical Director for the Honda F1 team, taking over from Geoff Willis, an aerodynamics specialist.

The Honda RA107, the first Formula One car designed under Nakamoto was very poor, mainly due to bad aerodynamics. The RA107 was even inferior to the Super Aguri SA07, a re-worked model of Willis' Honda RA106 from the previous season.

Various reasons have been proposed to explain why the car performed so poorly. One of which was that the wind tunnel which was set up in July, 2006 [cite news | url =http://world.honda.com/news/2006/c060712NewWindTunnel/ | title = Honda Increases UK Investment With New Wind Tunnel | publisher = [http://world.honda.com/ Honda Worldwide: one of the official websites of Honda Motor Co.,Ltd.] | pages = | page = | date =2007-06-19 | accessdate =2007-09-13 | language =English] broke at almost the same time that Geoff Willis was replaced by Nakamoto. [cite news | url =http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=36342 | title = Willis splits with Honda | publisher = [http://www.itv-f1.com/ ITV F1] | pages = | page = | date =2007-06-22 | accessdate =2007-09-13 | language =English] . Thus, the new car being designed using a faulty wind tunnel.

To try and fix the aerodynamics problems Honda employed a number of new aerodynamicists including Loïc Bigois,cite news | url =http://uk.reuters.com/article/UK_MOTORSPORT/idUKL0258488920070702 | title = Motor racing-Honda hope F1 recruiting drive pays off | publisher = [http://uk.reuters.com/ Reuters UK] | pages = | page = | date =2007-07-02 | accessdate =2007-09-13 | language =English] John Owen (ex-BMW Sauber), Ben Agathangelou (ex-Red Bull), Peter Coysh (ex-McLaren) and Francois Martinet (ex-Williams) in July 2007.

Personal life

Nakamoto was born in Tottori, Japan but now lives with his wife in Maidenhead, England.

References

External links

* [http://www.hondaracingf1.com/loband/keypeople.php?item_id=10 Profile] - from [http://www.hondaracingf1.com/ Honda Racing F1 official website]