With the chance to try out Honda's sporty R-Type performance cars on their home turf, Justin Hynes found them to be fine manifestations of the Tao of Honda - be a winner
Humility is not a characteristic regularly associated with driving. When asked in surveys to rank our driving skill most will ratchet down their ego to "average to good".
No one will ever admit to being rubbish behind the wheel. Multiply this by an X factor of stratospheric proportions and you have motorsport journalists.
But on a bright Tuesday morning at Honda's Twin Ring Motegi circuit in northern Honshu, I'm feeling, in the words of Dickens' Uriah Heep, very, very 'umble indeed. And the root causes of this sudden burst of hungover humility are Honda's NSX-R GT supercar and Jordan's Formula One pilot Takuma Sato.
Three days earlier we'd arrived in Tokyo as guests of Honda for an orientation on Honda's philosophy of building and racing cars.
North of Tokyo and near the small city of Utsonomiya is Twin Ring Motegi. This is Honda's state-of-the-art double circuit, a tricky flowing road course constructed in and around an oval circuit, all built into a bowl in the rolling hills of this quiet corner of Japan best known previously for the growing of pears and potatoes.
Here we get our first lesson in the Tao of Honda: Trying is admirable, success is everything. It's not something recently associated with Honda in Formula One.
Lesson two in the Tao of Honda. Look, listen, learn and overcome.
Next lesson, grasshopper. A notion that seems queerly un-Japanese: you gotta have fun. The fascinating thing about Japan, about its often inscrutable people is that behind the hidebound politeness lurks a sharp, wry sense of humour and a boundless capacity for childlike wonder.
It's demonstrated in projects such as Honda's foray into robotics. Asimo, a humanoid robot, began life in 1986 as an experiment by a bunch of bored engineers.
Now, 16 years after the first biped prototype which was a sort of a dishwasher on stilts, it's a kid-sized robot who cocks his head, waves stubby fingers, understands Japanese, dances like Michael Jackson and amuses small children. What's the point? At the moment, not a lot.
The lesson about fun brings us back to a pale and unlovely Formula One writer being shovelled through a 90-degree right-hander under braking from 200 kph by a smiling Japanese F1 driver in a carbon-fibre bodied GT racer that sells on the streets of Japan for just shy of 12 million yen (€98,000). Don't ask why? It's for fun.One of Honda's press people admits that 90 per cent of the NSX-Rs which the company sells to its sole market of Japan will never be used as intended, but it doesn't really matter. What's important is that it's a cool car which goes really fast.Therefore you have to build them.
As Sato launches the NSX-R through a beautiful right-left-tight right complex of turns that form Motegi's wonderful S-bends I'm beginning to understand what they mean. This is where we come back to the humility.
Ten minutes before climbing in with Taku, I'd blasted around Motegi in an Integra-R. I thought I'd done a pretty good job in a car which is the most forgiving I've ever driven.
The Integra is not the prettiest machine you'll ever see; it suffers from a current Japanese trend of making slightly bulbous, slab-sided and wide-eyed machines. But it handles like a go-kart. Barking the high-revving, 220 bhp, 2-litre from 160kph down to 40 kph, from sixth to third gear to take that 90 degree right-hander at the end of the pit straight, I thought I was looking pretty good.
Right line in, decent exit, set the unfeasably well balanced Integra up for a stab to 120 kph in fourth, before slotting the beautiful short throw six-speed box down to third for the flow through the S-bends.
The superby weighted steering has just the right amount of resistance. There's a subtle amount of understeer as you push through the lines of rubber left by previous racers. It all adds up to a car designed for maximum enjoyment and minimum fuss.
There's no stereo, no executive toys, no messing really. You slot into lurid scarlet Recaros, snik the brushed aluminium gearstick into first, listen to the satisfying snort of the engine and find your limit. It's a scream and I want one.
By the time I get back to the pits, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. Nothing flashy, but I didn't put it in the dirt. The feeling of well-being lasts about 30 seconds once a real driver shows me how it's done. Takuma Sato has come in for some criticism this season with some Jordan fans insisting that Eddie Jordan fire a driver who was in the words of one "a tosser". This "tosser" is now showing me what a real driver can do with a car, and it's spectacular.
Down the back straight and into turn one, he's still flat out in sixth, some 70 metres beyond the point where my brain starts screaming "brake!" He's 60kph faster than me and he's notching the car into second when I had been in third for what seemed like a week.
Behind the foot-wide tunnel of the NSX his feet are working like a drummer's, kicking off the clutch and dabbing the brake with his left foot, his right is feathering the accelerator like a hummingbird. He's Charlie Watts on the pedals and it's pure satisfaction.
His hands dart the steering wheel a degree left to control a momentary shift in rear end balance through a right hander as he engages second gear and blasts off the kerbs, his eyes firmly fixed two turns ahead, already mentally preparing himself and, by what seems like a psychic link, the car for the task.
It's an education, a revelation. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I know he's not really pushing himself. There's no desperation in his movements, no ragged glory in the gentle kissing of the kerbs. The kid's got a grand prix to race in five days. Then he'll bring out the real stuff, the 20 or 30 per cent of mental and physical acuity he's got in reserve as he arrows the NSX-R towards the pits. It's a refreshing reminder that Formula One drivers, all Formula One drivers are amazing sportsmen.
Next they hand me the keys to the Civic Type R, to see if I've learned anything. On the face of it, the Civic's a similar beast to the Integra. Front-wheel drive, two litre engine, six-speed box. But it's a vastly different machine on the track.
Where the Integra was accurate, tight and focused, the Civic washes out from beneath you as you plant the accelerator in second on the exit of turns. The short throw six-speed box is the same as the Integra's but in the Civic it's dash-mounted, supposedly to give the feel of a racing machine. For somebody who last saw a dash-mounted gearshift on a Renault 4, the shift feels uncomfortable and tricky.
Given the high seating position of the Civic, its location makes ergonomic sense but it still feels out of position, an arm's length away from the wheel in the middle of the dash. On the track the Civic feels more wallowy than the Integra and under braking and downshifting wriggles nervously. Into corners there's more body roll too.
Where the Integra sat down and cut itself into the groove of the line, the Civic leans through it with a touch of oversteer, forcing the nervous, like me, to lift and make over-compensatory adjustments.
The characteristics are understandable given the car's markedly different pedigree to that of the Integra, but with the price differential between the two coming in at a couple of hundred thousand yen, the Integra is the better bet. A purer driving experience and in the hands of an amateur like me a much more forgiving machine.
Getting your hands on them is the tricky bit. These Civics and Integras are Japan's only models featuring slightly greater power output thanks to less rigorous emissions controls.
With the market for grey imports having dried up in recent years sourcing a new Integra R might prove complex but these cars sum up the real Tao of Honda - a million miles away from the prosaic blandness of its Joe Commuter Civic and Accord runabouts.
It's a track-driven philosophy that does that rare thing. It makes your pulse race and the substance coursing through your veins might just become known as blood Type R.