M-TEC
M-TEC Co. Ltd. , formerly Mugen ( Japanese 無限 , German “infinity” or “limitless”), is a Japanese manufacturer and worldwide distributor of sporty accessories for Honda vehicles. The company works closely with Honda Motor Co. Ltd. and for a number of years also manufactured Formula 1 engines based on Honda engines. Hirotoshi Honda, the eldest son of Sōichirō Honda , founded the Mugen company in 1973, independently of his father's company. The company headquarters are in Asaka .
In 2003, Mugen went bankrupt after a tax scandal . The company has been called M-TEC since 2004 (“M” still stands for Mugen), Shin Nagaosa is the president, and Hiro Toyoda is in charge of the motorsport department.
Motorsport
formula 1
1991: Tyrrell
In 1991 a second team besides McLaren was given access to Honda engines for the first time . The choice fell on the traditional British team Tyrrell , mediated by Ron Dennis . Tyrrell had achieved some sensational successes in the 1990 Formula 1 season despite an inferior Cosworth eight-cylinder. The main reason for this was the unconventional but very effective 019 chassis from Harvey Postlethwaite .
The engines used by Tyrrell were called the Honda RA 101E. It was basically the ten-cylinder engines with a 72-degree cylinder angle that were run at McLaren in the 1990 Formula 1 season and were replaced there by completely new twelve-cylinders for 1991 and 1992. The ten-cylinder engines were prepared by Mugen.
For the 1991 season, Postlethwaite designed the Tyrrell 020 , which followed the 019 in design, but was more down-to-earth overall. In particular, given the comparatively high engine weight, the car turned out to be difficult to control, so that the advantage of its special agility was largely negated.
The alliance between Honda or Mugen and Tyrrell began promisingly, but ended in the area of mediocrity. A highlight was Stefano Modena's second place on the grid at the Monaco Grand Prix . However, Modena dropped out after 42 laps due to an engine failure. At the Canadian Grand Prix three weeks later, Modena was able to shine again. He finished the race second. After that, the team failed to achieve remarkable results and dropped significantly. At the end of the season, Tyrrell and Mugen split. Tyrrell used the 020 chassis in the 1992 Formula 1 season with minor modifications as the 020B with an Ilmor engine and at the start of the 1993 Formula 1 season as the 020C with a Yamaha engine .
1992 and 1993: Arrows / Footwork
.jpg)
In the 1992 Formula 1 season , Mugen equipped the British team Footwork with the ten-cylinder engine now known as the MF 351H. Arrows designer Alan Jenkins designed the Footwork FA13 for the season, a car that corresponded in many details to its predecessor FA12, which was designed for a Porsche engine. The drivers were Michele Alboreto and Aguri Suzuki . Alboreto was the most reliable driver of the year; he finished almost every race. He reached two fifth and two sixth final places, so that Footwork was able to finish the 1992 Formula 1 season with 6 world championship points in sixth place in the constructors’ championship.
In the 1993 Formula 1 season, the alliance between Footwork and Mugen was continued. Drivers were Derek Warwick and Aguri Suzuki. In the first two races of the year, Arrows used the previous year's model under the designation FA13B. Warwick reached the goal each time, but stayed outside of the points. The successor model, the FA14, made its debut at the European Grand Prix in Donington. The car, which had an active wheel suspension purchased from TAG, was difficult and hardly achieved any success. The only results in the points were a fourth place at the Hungarian Grand Prix and a sixth place at the British Grand Prix , which Warwick each achieved. At the end of this season, Mugen parted ways with Footwork. The British team drove with customer engines from Ford and Cosworth in the following season .
1994: Lotus
.jpg)
For the season 1994 was Lotus supplied with engines. The racing team, which was in financial difficulties, initially used another version of the Model 107 , which was released in 1992 (with the designation 107C ). At the Spanish Grand Prix , a revised car called the 109 appeared , which was initially only available to Johnny Herbert ; From the French Grand Prix onwards , Alessandro Zanardi also had access to a Lotus 109 as the second driver. Mugen provided the engine known from the previous year. For the Italian Grand Prix there was a revised version called the ZA 5-C, which was lighter and a little more potent. Nevertheless, there was nothing to be gained with the combination of Lotus and Mugen in 1994. None of the six drivers who drove for Lotus this year could achieve a championship point. At the end of 1994 Lotus was dissolved and the bankruptcy estate was bought by Pacific .
1995 and 1996: Ligier
For the Formula 1 season 1995 Mugen was as an engine partner for Minardi in conversation. There have been press reports from Italy, and in Faenza had Aldo Costa designed a car that was tailored to the Japanese engine. In November 1994, however, Mugen declared that instead of Minardi, he only wanted to supply the French Ligier team . Ligier had acquired Benetton Formula in 1994 . The background to this takeover were the coveted ten-cylinder engines from Renault , which were to be delivered to Williams and Ligier for the 1995 season. By taking over the Ligier team from Benetton F1, the Renault engines could be diverted to the Benetton team, where they would become an important building block on Michael Schumacher's path to winning his second drivers' championship. In order to equip Ligier with adequate engines for 1995, Benetton F1 finally took over the Mugen engines that were initially intended for Minardi. The question of how binding the agreement between Minardi and Mugen had been in autumn 1994 preoccupied lawyers during the 1995 season. Ultimately, after some back and forth, which included the use of a bailiff against the Italian team , Minardi was financially harmless in settlement. Regardless of this, Minardi had to back off in terms of sport, as alternatively used eight-cylinder customer engines from Ford were far less potent than the engines from Mugen and one's own car could only be converted from the Mugen engines to the Ford engines very hastily.
At Ligier, the Mugen ten-cylinder powered a car called the JS41. Technically and optically, this car largely corresponded to the Benetton B195 of the same year; in fact, the car had largely been developed in the Benetton factory. The inscription "Fabriqué en France" (German: Made in France ), which the car demonstratively drove around on its rear wing, did not change anything. Olivier Panis was signed as the driver , the second car was shared between Aguri Suzuki and Martin Brundle on a regular basis.
Overall, the alliance of Ligier and Mugen was quite successful. Olivier Panis finished second in the Australian Grand Prix and finished in points in six other races. Martin Brundle finished third and fourth once, and Aguri Suzuki finished sixth once.
The relationship between Ligier and Mugen continued in the 1996 Formula 1 season, although the previous team boss Tom Walkinshaw left the team at the beginning of the year and took over the British rival Arrows team . Drivers of the modified Ligier JS43 were Pedro Diniz , who had come from Forti and brought numerous Brazilian donors, and Olivier Panis, who won the Monaco Grand Prix spectacularly. It was the ninth win for a Ligier, the first for the French team since 1981 and the first ever for a Mugen engine.
1997: Cheers
In 1997, the four-time Formula 1 world champion Alain Prost took over the Ligier team and led it in the future under the name Prost Grand Prix . His aim was to build a purely French racing team, using Peugeot engines. However, Peugeot was still tied to Jordan for the 1997 Formula 1 season , so Prost used the Mugen engines again for this year. For 1998 there was an exchange with Jordan. Before that, however, Prost was able to consolidate further behind the top teams with the Mugen engines. Olivier Panis was able to draw attention to himself at the beginning of the season with podium finishes, but was seriously injured in an accident in Canada and only returned towards the end of the season.
1998 to 2000: Jordan
In the 1998 Formula 1 season , Mugen prepared the British team Jordan , where they achieved a double victory with Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher in Spa-Francorchamps in 1998 - although both drivers benefited from numerous failures in the field due to extremely bad weather conditions. 1999 was Heinz-Harald Frentzen in the Jordan-Mugen two races to decide for themselves and still had until the penultimate race chances of winning the world title; Ultimately, he and his team came third in their respective rankings. At the end of the season, Honda announced that it would return to Formula 1 the following year with its own engines and the BAR team, after previous plans for a completely new team had been abandoned due to the surprising death of chief engineer Harvey Postlethwaite in April of that year. In the 2000 season, Jordan received another Japanese ten-cylinder from Mugen, after which the company withdrew from Formula 1. However, Jordan could not build on the good performances from the previous season and fell back into midfield. From the 2001 season, the team received its engines directly from Honda.
Japanese GT Championship
From 1997 Mugen took over the development of a Honda NSX for the Japanese Super GT Championship , partly in cooperation with the racing car manufacturer Dome, and from 1998 started using a version of the new 3.2-liter series engine that was expanded to 3.5 liters made over 600 hp. Thus, an NSX reached the GT500 drivers championship in 2000, but without being able to win only one race. In 2002, Mugen / Dome won the championship team ranking with the two NSX deployed. After changes in the regulations for 2003, another engine variant was created based on the 3.0-liter engine that was no longer used in series production. This was installed lengthways (instead of transversely, as is standard) and forced ventilation using two turbochargers. Mugen opted for this solution because the naturally aspirated engines used until 2002 had lost too much power due to the lack of oxygen on the Japanese racetracks, some of which were located higher up. The more successful competing vehicles Toyota Supra and Nissan Skyline GTR , on the other hand, were equipped with turbo engines from the start and did not have this problem.
The NSX in the GT300 class, mainly used by private teams, were largely close to series production. Both the modification options and the engine power (to 300 hp) are and were limited here. The NSX did not achieve championship successes in this class for a long time. Only when the newly founded M-TEC shifted the previous Mugen activities from the GT500 to the GT300 class in the 2004 season and used a professionally prepared and driven NSX, the first GT300 championship could be celebrated. This success was rather unexpected, as Mugen had planned the use mainly as a training program for young Japanese drivers in preparation for future GT500 missions.
Electric motorcycles
At the beginning of the 2010s, the cooperation with Honda began to develop motorcycles with electric drive. In the racing series for electric motorcycles TT Zero at the Isle of Man TT , M-TEC competed for the first time with the Mugen Shinden. The motorcycle was named after the Japanese deity of electricity and lightning. The individual model variants are differentiated using the Japanese ordinal numbers. The third stage of development (" san ") is currently in use. Already on its debut in 2012, the Shinden with John McGuinness was able to take second place behind Michael Rutter, who had competed on an E1pc from the pioneer of this racing class from MotoCzysz . 2014 saw the first victory for McGuinness. He was able to repeat this on Shinden again the following year. In 2016 Bruce Anstey also won on Shinden. The machine has a monocoque frame and is driven by an oil-cooled, brushless electric motor with an output of 120 kW (163 hp ). Its torque is specified by M-TEC with 210 Nm . As is customary in the industry, M-TEC is silent about precise information on the capacity or design of the lithium-ion batteries used . With his victory in 2019, Michael Rutter raised the average to 121.91 mph (196.195 km / h ), which is only slightly slower than the speed of the solo motorcycles with internal combustion engines in the Supersport class.
Web links
- mugen-power.com (Official Website, Japanese)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Company information on the official website ( Memento from July 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- ↑ Super GT website ( Memento from June 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (under "Race Archive")
- ↑ Götterblitz. motomobil.at, 2013, accessed on July 10, 2016 .
- ↑ Shinden Go Unveiled For 2016 TT Zero. Company website, September 26, 2015, accessed July 10, 2016 .
- ↑ Rutter breaks record in TT Zero win. Retrieved June 8, 2019 .