The RA302 was built in response to a direct order from Honda founder Soichiro Honda to develop an air-cooled Formula One engine. While the existing RA301 — developed alongside British firm Lola Cars — used a conventional water-cooled V12 engine, the RA302 pursued a fundamentally different technical path. The car was constructed by Honda Racing France and featured a magnesium-alloy skin rather than the aluminium used on the RA301. Magnesium was chosen for its light weight, but the material is notoriously combustible.
Honda's regular driver John Surtees — the 1964 World Champion — was offered the car for the 1968 French Grand Prix but refused to drive it. Surtees conducted his own assessment of the RA302 and concluded that it was unsafe, publicly labelling it a "potential deathtrap." He elected to race the existing RA301 instead. Honda then assigned the RA302 to French driver Jo Schlesser, who had not previously driven a works Formula One car at a World Championship round.
The 1968 French Grand Prix was held at Rouen-Les-Essarts, a fast and demanding road circuit in Normandy. The RA302 was entered alongside Surtees's RA301 — two Honda cars with entirely different engineering philosophies on the same grid.
On lap three of the race, Schlesser lost control of the RA302 at the Virage des Six Frères section of the circuit. The car crashed and came to rest sideways against a bank. The magnesium bodywork and approximately 58 laps' worth of remaining fuel ignited immediately. The resulting fire was impossible to extinguish quickly given the nature of magnesium combustion, and Schlesser died at the scene. The original RA302 was completely destroyed.
Surtees, racing the RA301, finished second in the same race — underlining the painful contrast between the two programmes running in parallel that day.
A second RA302 was built with slight modifications. It was earmarked for Surtees to drive at the 1968 Italian Grand Prix, where Honda intended to reintroduce the air-cooled car. Surtees again refused to drive it on safety grounds, and Honda made no further attempt to race the design. The second RA302 was not entered in competition.
Honda announced their withdrawal from Formula One at the end of the 1968 season. The company would not return as a constructor until 2006, when the Honda RA106 competed in the World Championship — a gap of nearly four decades.
The surviving second RA302, the one built for Surtees and never raced, was preserved and displayed at the Honda Collection Hall in Japan. As of 2012 it remained on display there, a physical record of an experiment that ended in tragedy before it could be properly evaluated on its technical merits.
The RA302 occupies a singular place in the history of Honda's motorsport programme and in the broader history of Formula One safety. Schlesser's death was one of three fatalities in the 1968 season — alongside Jim Clark and Mike Spence — and contributed to growing pressure for more rigorous safety standards in the sport.
The car is also a case study in the tension between manufacturer ambition and driver authority. Surtees's refusal to drive the RA302 was vindicated by events, and his insistence on racing the proven RA301 is remembered as a principled stand at a time when drivers often had little formal leverage over the machinery they were expected to race. The RA302 programme demonstrated that radical technical ambition, when pursued without adequate development time, could have irreversible consequences — a lesson that would resonate through subsequent decades of Formula One engineering.