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Dec.02.2002 "Dome F1 Adventure Behind
The Scene Story"Episode 5 |
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The beginning of Never Ending Story
By one of time's revenges it started when we were doing a F105 test in
Motegi. It was beginning of July in 1998 when we were settling down
from what had happened with Marick.
We were testing a new semi-automatic gearbox on the day. The gearbox
seemed to be much better than the last one - the shift timing was much
shorter incomparably, the Mugen engine was weaving a delightful crispy
sound. Then we had an urgent call from Kyoto Headquarter and was told a
fax and a telephone from Holland inquiring F1 had come through.
I requested to forward the fax to the hotel in Mito where I was staying.
The sender was called Mark who was General Manager of a Dutch
computer-related company. As they were the sponsor of Jordan, Williams
and Tyrell in the past, the logo on the letterhead was familiar to me.
The contents of the letter did not say they wanted to be the sole
sponsor of our F1 project but they were planning to set up a F1 project
with several companies from different backgrounds so they wanted to know
our F1 project outline in details.
Though we had many incoming inquiries, it was rare to receive one from
an active?F1 sponsor company so I showed the fax to President in Pit
Wall in Motegi. He seemed to recognize the logo as well and we decided
to talk to them, and deal politely as they were interested in our
project and contacted us from abroad purposely.
We told Mark that we were preparing to develop a 1999 specification
chassis and carry out tests in Europe with the chassis to make a debut
in F1 world in 2000. We didn't want to think about their possible
intention of racing in 1999, so we emphasized that 1999 was only a test
year and we had no intention of racing in the year as we had just had
the experience with Marick.
At the same time, we had to emphasis that Honda was already planning to
come back to F1 world on their own in case their real aim was a Honda or
Mugen engine.
We told them as a chassis constructor, we would use any engine to
implement our F1 project.
Mark told us that our 2000 debut plan matched theirs. He asked us to
let them know our F105 test results and details in the last 2 years as
well as the details and budget of test program to be carried out in
1999. We thought he knew about racing operations very well though he
was in from a marketing background.
Inquiry about F1 project started coming in from 1997 to 1998 and all of
them were from abroad. We thought people wanted us because they thought
if they had a Dome chassis, a Mugen engine automatically came as a
package and they were interested in us because of the engine. But we
found out from the telephone conversation with Mark that he was
genuinely interested in chassis development. To sum up the reasons whey
they were interested in Dome's chassis development, they thought all F1
teams were more or less the same as European designers were circling the
small world and the race simply depended on the money rather than
technical capabilities. If they gave a chance to a new designer, it
could mean they were just going to build an incubator of a big team and
they weren't going to do that. Our capability was unknown but they
regarded us as a brand new approach towards F1: introducing our
technical capabilities into the F1 world meant they bought into futures
in order to have a stable technical background (long-term exclusive
relationship). For us that sounded like a wish came true and we were
thankful that they knew where to look.
The first thing came up about Dome in their appreciation was that we
were a self taught constructor which never had any help of European
constructors or designers and we were very glad as this fact was over
looked in Japan.
Though we had a good feel for this matter from the start, the situations
surrounding F1 at the time was very chaotic like Honda's case to start
with. We had many points to bring up prior to further discussion with
them. We wanted to take the initiative for handling test data,
development plan, and budget for tests. President wrote a long letter
to Mark to let him know our intention in advance.
Chassis design was done by now-dead Harvey and made one with Dallara,
set up an original team with rumps of Tyrell or cancel that and start
working with BAR because of Raynard etc., as everything was possible
then even in Japan, well, in Honda, so we had to be as organized as
possible in how we say things to a European.
As Mark's wife was working for an advertising agency, she was helping
the marketing and PR for this project. We were told to give her as much
data as possible as she was coming to Japan in the beginning of August
on a business trip.
Tadashi Sasaki
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