P126
CN
III IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
T
here were a lot of good-
byes at Valencia. One was
pretty important. Shuhei
Nakamoto, executive vice-
president of HRC, had reached
Japanese retirement age. In April
next year, he turns 60. Whether
he liked it or not, he had to go.
Nakamoto came to head the
Repsol Honda team in 2009.
Although originally a motorcycle
man, his previous eight years
had been with Honda's Formula
1 project, where he presided
over the design of an extremely
unsuccessful new model, which
turned out to be slower than the
car it replaced, and fairly rapidly
led to Honda's withdrawal.
This might look like a black
mark, but clearly Honda saw
it differently, and there were
certainly reasons that could
not necessarily be laid at Naka-
moto's door. Victim of circum-
stance, apparently. And he went
straight from heading the failing
four-wheel venture to taking over
the factory MotoGP team.
This too was going through
something of a fallow patch.
Nicky Hayden had snipped the
title in 2006, rather surpris-
ingly perhaps, and more through
consistency than by winning
races—only two that year. But it
ENJOY RETIREMENT, MR. NAKAMOTO
