Of all the drivers present for Honda’s 2023 motorsport activities presentation this week, one had a noticeably bigger grin on his face than the rest. After all, this was the day he had spent the last three years of his life working towards, two of which were spent out of a racing car.
Raoul Hyman is one of three rookies, and two international drivers, to be named as part of Honda’s nine-car roster for next season. He joins B-Max Racing alongside Nobuharu Matsushita, courtesy of his $600,000 scholarship from the marque’s US arm, Honda Performance Developments, for winning the Formula Regional Americas title.
In an alternate universe with no COVID-19, Hyman would have made his Japanese racing debut back in 2020 with the same team, albeit in Super Formula Lights. But the onset of the pandemic, which caused Japan’s borders to slam shut to almost all foreign arrivals, put the 26-year-old’s career into a holding pattern that has only recently come to an end.
It was only when an opportunity to contest FR Americas came up that Hyman returned to action for a potentially career-defining season. He knew winning the title and the scholarship would take him to Japan, but failure could well have spelt the end of his career.
“Spending two-and-a-half years out of the car, it makes you realise how privileged you are to be in this position,” Hyman tells Motorsport.com in a chat at Honda’s Tokyo HQ a few hours prior to the marque’s 2023 presentation, where he endeared himself to the assembled media by giving a brief introduction of himself in Japanese.
“Days like this, or jumping in the Super Formula car for the first time at Suzuka, or even just being here in Tokyo - it’s pretty surreal. It really makes me want to work even harder.”
Hyman’s recent visit to Japan for both the Suzuka rookie test and the Honda announcement was in fact his second visit to the fabled track. His first was in December 2019, back when ‘corona’ still merely referred to a Mexican beer brand, in what was officially the last-ever All-Japan Formula 3 test before it metamorphosed into Super Formula Lights.
“The test went really well, but I was in the older car and the guy who topped the test, Sena Sakaguchi, had the new car [Dallara F320] they are using now,” recalls Hyman of the test. “The gap between us was favourable towards me from the team’s standpoint.
“It was the best experience I’d ever had, the combination of car and track, up to that point. It was pretty much set that I was going to do in 2020, but then the travel restrictions came in. And after that I had almost two-and-a-half years of not driving anything!
“I was contacting teams left, right and centre trying to find something, but there was no opportunity really that was the right one. Even at the start of this year, it was a similar story until the opportunity came to race in Formula Regional Americas.”
A race winner in what was then known as GP3 with Campos Racing in 2017 and a champion in F3 Asia the following season, Hyman admits his chastening experience in 2019 in the newly-rebranded FIA F3 series with a new team in the form of Charouz (he scored one points finish all year) made him somewhat wary of some of the offers he received.
“The year we spent with Charouz reiterated to me that if you are going racing, you need to be with a team that you can win the championship with,” he says. “I had people call from FIA F3, Euroformula Open, and I had some good offers, but firstly we didn’t have the financial resources to take them, and secondly I knew there was nothing to gain by doing a guest appearance or racing in a situation where it wasn’t possible to win.
“Until the first test [in FR Americas] at New Orleans this year, I didn’t even sit in a race car, I hadn’t been to a race track. It was a really tough two years.”
Hyman freely admits that the knowledge the HPD scholarship would be on offer played the decisive role in taking up the opportunity to join TJ Speed Motorsports in FR Americas.
“We had to choose a series where you have a future, because we didn’t have unlimited funds to keep going,” explains Hyman. “I knew I needed to go to a series where I knew I could win based on the past results of the team - because then, without wishing to sound arrogant, at least it’s down to you. And if you win, there’s something waiting for you.”
Hyman went into the FR Americas season as by far the most experienced driver, and in the end he dominated, with a clean sweep of six poles and 11 of a possible 18 wins. But he insists that nothing was guaranteed after two seasons of inactivity.
“The main pressure was knowing that if I don’t win it, I’m not racing next year,” he reflects. “I was coming off two-and-a-half years of not racing, and I had some people telling me it would be hard to come back after that time and be competitive.
“It was something I really prayed about, to get in and be fast straight away. We didn’t even think about the alternative. It felt like God was giving me another chance, and I just had to take it without thinking about any contingency plans.”
Now Hyman faces the challenge of stepping up from Formula Regional machinery to Super Formula, a car with twice the power and perhaps three times as much downforce. “I was entering the Esses in Sector 1 at Suzuka faster than I had been all year on the straights,” he said following his first taste of his new B-Max mount in the rookie test.
With the team only having just taken delivery of its second car before the test, the two days ended up being little more than a shakedown for Hyman. The good news is that next year Super Formula is introducing an updated car with a new aerodynamics package, and that he therefore faces a more level playing field as a rookie than he would have done.
The 26-year-old however will have just one more test at Suzuka in March to acclimatise before the season kicks off at Fuji in April. And he’s keenly aware that his HPD scholarship has merely got him through the door - and that if he is to stick around in Super Formula beyond the end of the 2023 season, he needs to make a big impression quickly.
“It’s just like last season,” he says calmly. “I knew last year if I didn’t win the scholarship, it might be the end of my career. This year I have the support from HPD and HRC, but I also know that I need to be at the highest possible level as soon as possible.
“We only have one more test before the start of the season, so we really have to maximise that. It’s a high-pressure situation, but at the same time, I think I’m strong under pressure.”
Hyman also feels that B-Max is well-equipped to provide him the tools to get the results he needs, despite its lack of pedigree versus fellow Honda-engine squads Team Mugen, Dandelion Racing and Nakajima Racing.
“They had a difficult year last year, but they’ve won titles in Super Formula Lights, they won a race in Super Formula, they had a pole last year,” he says. “When I saw the team working at the test, you can see they are at a good level.
“I’m not really too bothered about what other people expect. My expectations are that we are contenders, because that’s what I need to be in order to keep racing. We need to make progress every single time, but I’ll do my best to ‘out-work’ everyone else, try to ensure we do the same thing as a team, and then I believe the results will come. That’s the plan.”
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the stakes will be higher for Hyman next season than for any other driver on the grid. But having waited so long for this chance to race in the land of opportunity that is Japan, it’s clear that he intends to make the most of it.
