In 1986, Japanese businessman Akira Akagi — who had been involved in motorsport through his driver Akira Hagiwara — met Ivan Capelli's manager Cesare Gariboldi at Imola during an F3000 race. Akagi agreed to sponsor Capelli's Formula One campaign, providing US$4 million for March Engineering to build a car painted in the distinctive Leyton House cyan livery. Leyton House was the brand name of Akagi's Japanese real estate company, Marusho Kosan.
The March 87P with which Capelli began his F1 career was initially a modified F3000 chassis, upgraded for the March 871 at the San Marino round. Adrian Newey joined March in August 1987 and designed the March 881 for 1988, pairing Capelli with Mauricio Gugelmin. The 881 proved genuinely competitive: the team scored 22 points in 1988, including a second-place finish for Capelli at the Portuguese Grand Prix. It was the only normally aspirated car to legitimately lead a race during the turbocharged era, and its aerodynamic concepts and ultra-slim monocoque were widely copied by the rest of the grid the following year. The car launched Newey's reputation as a top-tier aerodynamicist.
In May 1989, Akagi purchased the F1 team outright from March's publicly-owned parent company. The chassis was renamed the March CG891, the "CG" prefix honoring Cesare Gariboldi, who had died in a road accident in January. The season was difficult in terms of results, though Gugelmin had scored a third place in the opening race in Brazil while still running the older 881.
Renamed Leyton House Racing for 1990, the team ran the CG901 chassis, again designed by Newey with Judd V8 power. An aerodynamic problem traced to the Southampton wind tunnel created severe difficulties early in the year, with both Capelli and Gugelmin failing to qualify at several rounds. Newey was dismissed as a result, but not before correcting the issue.
The turnaround came at the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard. Capelli and Gugelmin qualified seventh and tenth respectively, then ran first and second through much of the race — largely by staying out while others pitted. Gugelmin eventually retired with an engine failure, but Capelli led until three laps from the end, when a misfire allowed Alain Prost's Ferrari through. The second place was nonetheless a celebrated result for the small team. Off track, the operation was strained by Akagi's constant budget reductions and the illness of team manager Ian Phillips, who contracted meningitis during the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend. Newey departed for Williams at the season's end.
For 1991, new technical director Gustav Brunner and Chris Murphy designed the CG911, which switched from the Judd V8 to the new Ilmor V10. The team struggled throughout the season. Capelli scored a single point at the Hungarian Grand Prix before standing down near the season's end to make way for Karl Wendlinger. The season ended under a cloud: in September 1991, Akagi was arrested in connection with a financial scandal involving Marusho Kosan and the Fuji Bank. Associate Ken Marrable took over the team's administration, but money was critically short.
The team was sold to a consortium including Marrable, Brunner, lawyer John Byfield, and Dutch motorsport businessman Henny Vollenberg. For 1992 the operation reverted to the March name to distance itself from the controversy surrounding Akagi. The team managed a fourth-place finish by Wendlinger in Canada but continued to struggle financially, eventually folding in early 1993. Akira Akagi died on 8 August 2018.
Leyton House Racing left an outsized impression relative to its results, largely due to the influence of the Adrian Newey-designed 881 on subsequent F1 car design and the memorable drama of the 1990 French Grand Prix. The team's striking cyan livery and its role in Newey's early career make it a distinctive figure in the late 1980s and early 1990s Formula One landscape.