Quote:
Originally posted by Vitesse
Kojima's downfall was their unwillingness to race outside Japan and consequently they were starved of development. There were plans for the Kauhsen team to run a Kojima in 1978, but nothing came of these: nor was there any result from the rumoured Kojima-Honda F1 car.
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Kauhsen's failure was nothing to do with Kojima Engineering and the "Kojima-Honda F1" was just a rumour generated by European media and nothing more than that.
Mr. Kojima always wanted to race at overseas venues and was even ready to go to the first round of 1978, the Brazilian Grand Prix as Kojima Engineering without any assistance of Kauhsen or any other team.
If I am to suggest reasons why it "looked" as if Mr. Kojima did not want to race outside Japan was because he wanted to involve as many Japanese organizations as possible to educate them (One of the reasons why he chose KAYABA, Dunlop and Bridgestone) to bring Japanese to a higher level, but the understanding of motor racing by Japanese was very poor at the time (This will also eliminate the possiblity of Kojima-Honda). That is why Kojima never had a "real" sponsorship deal even with those fantastic performances. So it was more of Japanese not willing to do it rather than Mr. Kojima himself.
He also had his versions of theory that, if you can not win in your home ground you will not win in other grounds (outside Japan). Being a former works Suzuki motocross rider himself at international level, he knew exactly what was required to compete at that level. Again, this is one of the reasons why Kojima competed well when it was designed by Mr. Masao Ono, who also created the "not very good (to put it lightly)" Maki F101/C.