The Beautiful fail

Honda came to Le Mans 2022 to become the most successful manufacturer in the race’s history. Thirteen wins already. One more would have made it official. They finished third.

We saw a beautiful story. The brief pivoted immediately: not a win campaign, but a documentation of an exceptional defeat. We drained the engine oil from the Honda CBR No. 5 and sent it to screen printing studio Shlag Lab, where it became the ink for 24 silkscreens, one for each hour of the race. “We wanted to make sure that the race was also told by the machine,” said our art director Jean Weessa. “We quickly chose engine oil, for its resemblance to ink.” The prints were released on Instagram over exactly 24 hours, synchronised with the original race timeline, awarded to the first commenter on each post.

The Lyon Motorcycle Show hosted the exhibition: 110,000 visitors came to the Honda stand over four days. The campaign was signed by a line from Soichiro Honda: “When you fail, you also learn how not to fail.” The D&AD jury responded: “The idea of failing is more powerful than winning.”