SUPER GT: The logic behind Honda's ARTA/Mugen 'superteam'

Next year, ARTA joins the exclusive ranks of two-car GT500 teams, a club that also includes the TOM’S Toyota squad and Nissan’s factory NISMO outfit.

The two Hondas will be officially known as ‘ARTA Mugen NSX-GTs’, maintaining the #8 and #16 numbers of past seasons, and both machines are expected to carry the distinctive day-glo orange colouring of Autobacs.

Both cars will run on Bridgestone tyres, fulfilling a long-running Honda wish to get four of its five-strong GT500 fleet on the benchmark tyre maker for the first time since 2016.

On the driver side, the two members of the #8 line-up of the past three seasons have been split up to ensure each car has a driver with experience of Bridgestones, with the other two drivers coming from using Dunlop tyres.

That means Tomoki Nojiri will be paired with Toshiki Oyu aboard the #8 car in what has to be regarded as one of the most exciting line-ups on the grid, while Nirei Fukuzumi will partner up with his Suzuka Racing School classmate of a decade ago, Hiroki Otsu, in the #16 car.

Having two of Honda’s five GT500 entries under the same banner and operated by the same service provider evokes memories of the 'Honda Racing’ project of 2005-06, back when the ARTA entry was one of two cars operated by Dome.

Daisuke Ito and Ralph Firman shared the ARTA NSX in 2005 under the 'Honda Racing' banner

The union was short-lived however, and at the end of their title-winning 2007 season ARTA and Dome went their separate ways, with Aguri Suzuki’s squad instead beginning a 15-year alliance with service provider Servus Japan that lasted until last month.

ARTA and Servus never achieved their joint objective of winning the GT500 title, coming closest last year with Nojiri and Fukuzumi finishing second overall and just four points shy of glory. Operational errors cost the team dearly that season, and this was a trend that continued this year as the #8 car finished a lowly 12th in the standings out of 15 crews.

In the end, ARTA simply lost faith and wanted out of its partnership with Servus. At the same time, Mugen was growing increasingly frustrated that its decision to switch to Dunlop tyres wasn’t working out.

Mugen ended a long absence from the GT500 class in 2017, initially partnering up with Yokohama. But results were hard to come by, and when Red Bull was signed as title sponsor in 2020, the pressure to make a change was building.

At the same time, a much improved season for fellow Honda team Nakajima Racing, which scored two poles and a podium in 2020, combined with Dunlop’s desire to take on a second team in GT500, made the switch a logical option for Mugen ahead of the 2021 campaign.

However, two years down the road, it looks like 2020 was more of a blip than the start of a positive trend for Dunlop, and ironically Yokohama has been the tyre brand in the ascendancy this season, coming very close to winning a race.

There was a growing sense in Mugen it had backed the wrong horse in Dunlop

Mugen was desperate to get its #16 car on Bridgestone tyres, and ARTA wanted to change the organisation responsible running its #8. Joining forces means that both parties get what they want, all while enjoying the obvious synergies of having two cars being run under the same roof - something that Nojiri says he is looking forward to experiencing.

“Nothing is exactly the same in motorsports, and each monocoque has tiny differences that require the set-up to be different,” Nojiri told Motorsport.com’s Japanese edition. “Up to now we’ve had three one-car Bridgestone teams, and there have been times when I’ve thought, ‘why is that team using that tyre, we can’t make it work’.

“If the same things happen within a two-car team, then it could be because of the monocoque. Because we’ll be able to see things we were blind to before, we’ll raise the level within Honda as a whole, and we’ll be the ones who can make best use of that knowledge.”

Every driver in the two-car ARTA/Mugen stable likewise has reason to be cheerful. Nojiri gets to work with his dominant Super Formula team, including chief engineer Toshihiro Ichise; Fukuzumi gets the chance to prove himself as ‘A-driver’ after three years of being Nojiri’s apprentice; and Oyu and Otsu both never have to look at a Dunlop tyre again.

One casualty of the union was the ARTA GT300 project, which won the class title as recently as 2019 but has endured a rough couple of years as the de facto home for Honda junior drivers. But one gets the impression that the now-retired Hideki Mutoh wasn’t especially relishing his comeback to the GT300 ranks, while the quick-but-incident prone Iori Kimura - like Ren Sato before him - is probably better off focusing on just one series for now.

The ARTA GT300 project is no more, leaving Team UpGarage as the only confirmed NSX GT3 squad next year

Servus meanwhile may be without its most prolific partner, but it still runs the Team UpGarage NSX in the GT300 class, while providing engineering support to Team Kunimitsu.

Perhaps the only party that can truly be said to have lost out in all of this is Dunlop. Dropping back to one car will slow down its rate of development, and with few prospects of attracting another team until Nakajima Racing can get back to some kind of respectability.

Veteran Takuya Izawa will continue to be a valuable asset for the team, but Otsu’s replacement Kakunoshin Ota will face a steep learning curve in his rookie GT500 season. Rather like Racing Project Bandoh in the Toyota stable, the #64 Nakajima machine seems to have acquired the unofficial status of ‘training car’ for Honda’s young prospects.

Conversely, the union between ARTA and Mugen has lifted Aguri Suzuki’s squad from being just one of three Bridgestone NSX-GT teams to the status of Honda’s flagship squad in its quest to wrest back the GT500 title.

Additional reporting by Kenichiro Ebii