Shuhei Nakamoto
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Shuhei Nakamoto (中本 修平 Shūhei Nakamoto, born 29 April 1957) is the Senior Technical Director for the Honda Formula One team.
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[edit] 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 and gaining multiple promotions up until the year 2002 when he became the Race and Test Team Manager for Honda Racing Developments Ltd. (HRD). Another promotion in 2003 lead 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 aerodynamicsspecialist in Formula One.
The Honda RA107, the first Formula One car designed under Nakamoto was very poor, mainly in the aerodynamics. The RA107 was inferior to the Super Aguri SA07, a re-worked model of Willis' Honda RA106 in the 2006 season. The Honda team was made suffer by this Nakamoto's car during the season, and all of the previous achievements and the victory in the previous season were all quickly forgotten. Though a Honda driver in this year and the most experienced Formula One driver at the season, Rubens Barrichello, always keeped taking the attitude friendly even to only small advancements of this car,[1][2] even he grieved this car was 'carro "P" da vida' ('the "W" car in the life' in the Portuguese language) after the United States GP in June,[3] thus, hinted the car was the 'Pessimo' (Worst in Portugues) in his fifteen-years career in Formula One.
There have been various proposed reasons to explain why the car performed so poorly. One of which suggests that the wind tunnel which was set up in 2006 July[4] broke at almost the same time Geoff Willis was replaced by Nakamoto.[5]. Thus, the car was designed using a faulty wind tunnel. Either way, Honda not only became a panel that employed many aerodynamic specialists like Loïc Bigois,[6] John Owen (ex-BMW Sauber),[6] Ben Agathangelou (ex-Red Bull), Peter Coysh (ex-McLaren) and Francois Martinet (ex-Williams)[6] in a short term of the summer of 2007, but also are quite the butt of many jokes in the Formula One world from fans.
[edit] Personal life
Nakamoto was born in Tottori, Japan but now lives with his wife in Maidenhead, England. Nakamoto's main interest is sports.
[edit] References
- ^ "Barrichellos's column", Rubens Barrichello official website, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. (Portuguese)
- ^ "Barrichellos's column (in English)", Rubens Barrichello official website, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. (English *English version has omited some articles)
- ^ "Direto da America", Rubens Barrichello official website, 2007-06-19. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. (Portuguese)
- ^ "Honda Increases UK Investment With New Wind Tunnel", Honda Worldwide: one of the official websites of Honda Motor Co.,Ltd., 2007-06-19. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. (English)
- ^ "Willis splits with Honda", ITV F1, 2007-06-22. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. (English)
- ^ a b c "Motor racing-Honda hope F1 recruiting drive pays off", Reuters UK, 2007-07-02. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. (English)
[edit] External links
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