Honda-powered squad Dandelion Racing began its 2025 season with 4 consecutive wins, throughout the opening double-headers at Suzuka and Motegi, with its drivers Tadasuke Makino and Kakunoshin Ohta selecting up two wins apiece.
Together with final 12 months’s closing double at Suzuka, which was swept by Ohta, Dandelion has gained the final six races in a row — the final time that was carried out was by Nakajima Racing, all the best way again in 2000. That 12 months, which was dominated by ex-System 1 racer Toranosuke Takagi, was additionally the final time a workforce opened a marketing campaign with 4 straight victories.
Makino and Ohta are each 20 factors clear within the drivers’ championship over third-placed Ayumu Iwasa, the Racing Bulls F1 reserve who leads Crew Mugen’s cost. The groups’ title already appears to be like nearly a carried out cope with Dandelion on over double the factors of Mugen.
It’s a exceptional run of type for the small Kyoto-based workforce, which has simply 25 everlasting workers and was shaped in 1993 by Kiyoshi Muraoka to race in All-Japan System 3.
After struggling for outcomes each in F3 and the now-defunct Japan Touring Automobile Championship, which ran to Tremendous Touring guidelines, Dandelion first entered what was then generally known as System Nippon in 1999 with a single automotive for little-known Argentinian driver Ruben Derfler.
The early years in System Nippon have been powerful going, however the charismatic Muraoka was busy constructing the foundations for future success. In 2001, he signed Norimitsu Yoshida as chief engineer, starting a partnership that continues to the current day. Later that season he signed a cope with the Sauber F1 workforce to supply technical help.
However results-wise, it was solely after the workforce signed Ulsterman Richard Lyons to switch an underperforming Jonathan Cochet in mid-2002 that issues took an upturn.
Kiyoshi Muraoka maintaining a tally of Naoki Yamamoto in 2019
Photograph by: Masahide Kamio
With the assistance of engineer Rob Arnott, who joined the workforce in 2003, Lyons scored Dandelion’s first win that 12 months at Suzuka, which proved the springboard to a profitable title bid the next 12 months. Muraoka additionally credit the workforce’s enlargement to a second automotive and the work of veteran Naoki Hattori (who didn’t qualify for 2 grands prix at Coloni again in 1991) as Lyons’ team-mate throughout this era as one other consider Dandelion’s rise.
When the present Toyota versus Honda engine rivalry started in 2006, Dandelion joined the Honda camp. Beginning with Takuya Izawa in 2009, it was charged with serving to prepare the marque’s younger drivers, its relationship with Honda evolving from that of mere engine provider to one thing a lot deeper.
A primary groups’ title got here in 2012 with Izawa and one other Honda protege, Koudai Tsukakoshi. After a fallow interval throughout the SF14 period (the spotlight of which was Stoffel Vandoorne’s pair of wins in 2016 on his solution to F1), Dandelion bounced again within the first 12 months of the SF19 with one other groups’ title, adopted by a second drivers’ title for Naoki Yamamoto in 2020.
“What we are attempting to exhibit is that privateer groups can nonetheless do nice issues, like within the outdated days of motorsport” Kiyoshi Muraoka
Fixed chopping-and-changing within the driver line-up, with Yamamoto and Nirei Fukuzumi leaving in consecutive years, brought on Dandelion’s star to wane once more considerably. The primary season with the revised SF23 machine additionally seemed prefer it might be one to neglect, earlier than a productive in-season take a look at at Fuji catapulted Makino and then-rookie Ohta up the order, culminating with the latter getting his first win on the finish of that season.
Makino broke his victory duck in emotional fashion final 12 months at Autopolis, with he and Ohta delivering Dandelion its third groups’ title. Now with each its drivers on the head of the standings, cut up by only a single level, Muraoka has set the express goal of successful the drivers’ and groups’ crowns in the identical 12 months for the primary time within the squad’s historical past.
Dandelion’s present success, on paper, shouldn’t be potential. Lean in dimension, it will get by with simply two engineers per automotive at a time that almost all different groups have three, with the likes of Mugen and TOM’S having much more than that. The ultra-experienced Yoshida takes on the twin position of race engineer to Ohta’s #6 automotive and workforce director.
Blooming within the springtime: the Dandelion duo obtained 2025 off to a high quality begin at Suzuka
Photograph by: Masahide Kamio
Primarily based in Kameoka Metropolis close to Kyoto, Dandelion can be considerably remoted from the primary hub of the Japanese motorsport business within the Gotemba space (two hours’ drive from Tokyo, close to Fuji), the place most Tremendous System groups are based mostly.
This makes it difficult to recruit new workers, though it additionally fosters a way of loyalty among the many members it does appeal to, and helps cease any secrets and techniques from leaking. The F1 equal – fittingly sufficient, given Dandelion’s former affiliation – can be Sauber.
Placing the placement to 1 facet, maybe the higher F1 analogue can be Williams as, just like the Grove squad, Dandelion exists purely to compete and win in its chosen self-discipline.
It doesn’t compete in another classes, eschewing Japan’s different high collection, Tremendous GT, wherein the likes of TOM’S, Mugen and Nakajima are all lively. “I believe this provides us a type of purity I believe different groups don’t have,” Muraoka advised Autosport in an interview final 12 months.
Ex-System 2 racer Makino and new rising star Ohta additionally deserve their share of the credit score for Dandelion’s 2025 type, their pleasant rivalry pushing the pair to ever-greater heights.
Each appear like respectable title contenders, and the pressure their up-to-now cordial relationship will come beneath is bound to be a speaking level because the season develops, particularly after Ohta was left fuming after the second race of the Suzuka opener after being handed by Makino whereas beneath the impression the workforce had instructed him to remain behind.
Muraoka might effectively have a job on his palms protecting the pair in verify because the prize nears, however after a pair of 1-2 finishes for his drivers at Motegi, it’s all good vibes for now. Certainly, at Motegi, the flamboyant workforce proprietor appeared within the parc ferme interview to jokingly inform long-time sponsor NTT Docomo to open its pockets and cough up some win bonuses!
After Dandelion gained the groups’ title in 2019, Muraoka had introduced his retirement, however a mix of circumstances amid the COVID-19 pandemic lastly meant he stayed on as the general public ‘face’ of the workforce. Tremendous System, which is utilizing the slogan ‘Human Motorsport’ to advertise itself, is all of the richer for having him round.
The workforce adopted up its Suzuka clear sweep with one other within the subsequent spherical at Motegi
Photograph by: Masahide Kamio
And in an period wherein cash is king, it’s refreshing to see an underdog outfit like his that’s nonetheless able to upsetting the percentages.
“In most championships, you must be a producer or have an in depth alliance with a producer to win,” stated Muraoka. “What we are attempting to exhibit is that privateer groups can nonetheless do nice issues, like within the outdated days of motorsport. I believe if a workforce like ours didn’t exist any extra, the championship can be much less fascinating.” Amen to that.
Photographs from Miami GP – Thursday
Learn Additionally:
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Jamie Klein
System 1
Tremendous System
Williams
Dandelion Racing
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