Ayrton Senna’s 1990 Championship-Winning F1 Car Up For Auction

• Honda Racing Corporation to sell rare Formula 1 engines and parts starting from August 2025.
• Legendary Ayrton Senna’s 1990 championship-winning RA100E V10 engine components are available to collectors.
• Auction is the first step in HRC’s new memorabilia business venture.

It’s not every day that parts of Formula 1 greatness leave the garage floor and land in someone’s living room. But for August 2025, Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) has exactly that in mind. The company has announced plans to auction off rare race-used parts from its most iconic machines, including components from the V10 engine that powered Ayrton Senna to his second world championship in 1990, offering collectors and fans the chance to own authentic pieces of motorsport legacy.

This is the first time Honda is opening up its motorsport vault, and it’s doing so with purpose. The auction is part of a broader strategy to turn its racing legacy into a living, collectable experience by giving fans the real fragments of F1 history.

Honda’s motorsport story dates back over seventy years, starting in the 1950s. The company dipped its toe into Formula 1 in the 1960s, paused in 1968, then again joined the scene in 1983. And when they returned, they didn’t just show up — they dominated, especially when it came to building engines.

The late ’80s and early ’90s were a golden era for Honda in F1, thanks to a legendary partnership with McLaren. It all peaked in 1990, when Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger led the McLaren MP4/5B to victory, powered by the RA100E V10 engine — a naturally aspirated, 3.5-litre masterpiece that gave 710 horsepower and a whole lot of wins. Now, many years later, that golden era is being brought back to life— not on the racetrack, but under the auctioneer’s hammer.

The auction will be held at Monterey Car Week 2025 and will feature a selection of components from the championship-winning RA100E engine that collectors can bid on. We’re talking camshafts, cam covers, pistons, and connecting rods. Each part will be carefully disassembled at HRC’s Sakura City facility in Japan by the same engineers who built the engine in the first place, and every piece will come in a custom display case with a certificate of authenticity from HRC. Many people think this is about cashing in on the old parts of automotive history, but Koji Watanabe, who is the HRC’s President, made it clear that this is about building a lasting connection between Honda’s racing past and the fans who still live and breathe it.

The 2025 auction is only the start. HRC has got bigger plans in the works of auctioning a wider range of racing artifacts, including signed gear, limited-edition collectibles and rare parts from other racing series like IndyCar and MotoGP.

This auction can easily be described as a shift in how motorsport heritage is shared because instead of keeping history locked behind factory doors like the norm, Honda is handing the keys to fans, literally.