Sep.10.2002 "Dome F1 Adventure Behind The Scene Story"Episode 4
Le Petit Price Comes to Japan

Marick hurriedly came to Japan in February 1998. I picked him up from Kansai Airport, showed him around our company and discussed with President and Director Oku to materialize the project.
Marick hadn't changed his mind to have a F1 debut in 1999 from the last meeting we had in London. I had given a plan to materialize his ambition though I was pretty sure it was impossible due to lack of time. After showing around the factory and the design room, we suggested that we should concentrate on tests in 1999 and make a debut in 2000 instead as he should have sensed that his ambition was difficult from what he had just seen. But our trial failed. It didn't matter if his schedule made sense or not. He must have had some kind of deal fixed with the investors group, his attitude was "all or nothing" - if we didn't do it now, this case was gone.
It had been 4 years since I left the position in F1 industry, and it was a good timing to start again before my experience and knowledge in F1 industry wore off. But it was difficult to set up the operation base in England in synchronism with producing the car and setting up a racing team.
President had been very positive about the whole thing and said, " We are not in the position to pursue dreaming. We will maximize any opportunities" but also said, "but we cannot even start without the engine, can we?" speaking from his own agonizing experience.
Thus we headed to Tokyo together to meet Mugen to see if there were any possibilities we could have engine from them.
To tell the truth, it was a kind of ceremony for Marick as we did know the situation between Honda and Mugen then. Marick said he was interested in Dome itself, not because of Mugen engine but it was quite obvious and we thought it was the best thing for him to meet President Honda directly and know the situation by the feel.
The meeting with President Honda of Mugen was basically positive. President Honda said it may be possible to go into the F1 world as Mugen/Dome F1 project with Marick's passion towards Africa on the ground that they had a different points of view; Honda participates as a works team to get a quick result as a car manufacturer, to up build Japanese motor sport industry, or to bring up young drivers and engineers etc. Our attitude was to move forward day by day, step by step…from the 20th to 15th place, from 15th to 10th place, then into the top 6th places. By the time the world will acknowledge that we are a part of their world, and this is how we should go about F1 challenge.
"It is useless to flog a dead horse" but I cannot help thinking it is such a shame we weren't given a chance, seeing Honda working with BAR, BAR & Jordan continuously later.
Having said that, it was impossible for President Honda to say they could provide the engine for 2.4 billion yen at that time. We could do nothing but wait for the policy fixed on Honda's management side and Marick had to learn the fact by facing it.
As we knew Honda was preparing for F1 challenge, offering concrete consultation to them was a good way of spying out their inside details in return. Anyhow, it seemed to little bit inappropriate to take this huge prince to Honda Headquarter with me so I decided to ask my good friends from Honda to come to a hotel full of foreigners in Akasaka. Sadly, it didn't turn out we could actually discuss as they were unusually quiet. It was one-way conversation and we ended up talking just about our plan and situations to them. We understood why they kept so quiet soon later. Honda announced their 3rd term F1 challenge plan under the direction of Mr. Kawamoto.
Marick was so disappointed to hear the news and I tried to calm him down. We left Tokyo in disappointment. I felt so sorry for him but we basically wanted to postpone the 1999 debut plan anyway, and we had no intention of having other engine options for the following year's challenge. Neither President nor myself wanted to talk about Supertech etc. with Frabio Briatore.
President later came to England to have further meetings with Marick and some marketing representatives from a Tobacco company to develop actions to overcome but we couldn't see a breakthrough. Time passed relentlessly and Monaco GP was about to start. We told Marick that the time for 1999 debut plan was up.
Marick was in a hopeless plight and to our surprise he used the Mogan Glennfeld's billions of investment to buy Arrows. As you may know he was kicked out of the team later though.
I have seen Tom opening or closing the garage at Grand Prix recently and the onset of the current situations roots from the investoment. Is this Marick's grudge?

Tadashi Sasaki