Formula One

His sponsors, Japan Tobacco, arranged a Formula One seat for Katayama in 1992 with Cabin brand, with the Larrousse team. The car was unreliable and a distinct midfielder, with team-mate Bertrand Gachot getting the lion's share of the team's meagre resources. However, Katayama impressed by running in 5th at the Canadian GP until his engine blew, but was eventually left with a brace of 9th places as his best result.

Japan Tobacco managed to arrange a switch to Tyrrell for 1993, but the team were at a nadir, with the interim 020C essentially three years old, and the new 021 proving uncompetitive. 10th place at the Hungarian GP was his best result.

1994 was to see a considerable turnaround for Tyrrell and Katayama. He impressed with the new 022, with three points-scoring finishes, a number of good qualifying performances, and generally being faster than his more experienced and acclaimed team-mate Mark Blundell. He was consistently a top-6 runner, but the car proved to be unreliable, leading him to 12 retirements, including the German GP, in which he was running 3rd before his throttle stuck open. However, in the four races that he did finish, he scored two 5th places, one 6th, and one 7th, good enough for 5 World Championship points.

After his 1994 performance, he was allegedly offered a contract with a top team for the 1995 season, but in Katayama's words, "he couldn't sign it". It would later emerge that in 1994 he had been diagnosed with cancer in his back; while non-threatening, it was painful, and his Grand Prix commitments delayed treatment. Katayama did not announce this until he retired from Formula One, not wanting anyone's sympathy to make excuses for him.

He stayed on with Tyrrell for the next two seasons, but suffered a loss of form, with two 7th places in high-attrition races his best results, thus scoring no points whilst being outpaced by rookie team-mate Mika Salo. At the 1996 Belgian Grand Prix he finished on the lead lap for the single time in his Formula One career.^[2] During these years he was highly disadvantaged by the regulation changes which led to higher cockpit sides,^{[citation needed]} a response to the death of Ayrton Senna at the 1994 San Marino GP.

After leaving Tyrrell, his Mild Seven (another brand of Japan Tobacco) backing landed him a seat at Minardi, but they too were at a low ebb, and two 10th places were his best result. At his home Grand Prix, he emotionally announced his retirement from Formula One.

After Formula One

Career summary

Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results

More information Year, Team ...

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1988	Courage Compétition	Paul Belmondo François Migault	Courage C22-Porsche	C1	66	DNF	DNF
1992	Toyota Team Tom's	Geoff Lees David Brabham	Toyota TS010	C1	192	DNF	DNF
1998	Toyota Motorsports Toyota Team Europe	Toshio Suzuki Keiichi Tsuchiya	Toyota GT-One	GT1	326	9th	8th
1999	Toyota Motorsports Toyota Team Europe	Keiichi Tsuchiya Toshio Suzuki	Toyota GT-One	LMGTP	364	2nd	1st
2002	Pescarolo Sport	Éric Hélary Stéphane Ortelli	Courage C60-Peugeot	LMP900	144	DNF	DNF
2003	Kondo Racing	Masahiko Kondo Ryo Fukuda	Dome S101-Mugen	LMP900	322	13th	8th

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Complete Japanese Formula 3000 results

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† Katayama did not finish the race, but was classified as he completed more than 90% of the race distance.

Complete JGTC results

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