Ukyo Katayama
Japanese · Born 1963-05-29
About Ukyo Katayama
Ukyo Katayama, a Japanese driver born in 1963, competed in Formula 1 from 1992 to 1997, making ninety-five Grand Prix starts over six consecutive seasons. He drove for three teams: Larrousse, Tyrrell and Minardi.
His debut came with the small French Larrousse operation in 1992, when he was twenty-eight. A move to Tyrrell followed in 1993, beginning a four-season association with the British team that formed the core of his career.
The 1994 season was comfortably his best: he scored five championship points and finished seventeenth in the drivers' standings. It proved to be his only points-scoring year; the surrounding Tyrrell campaigns of 1993, 1995 and 1996 all ended without a score, as the team's competitiveness faded through the mid-1990s.
Katayama spent his final season, 1997, with Minardi, another of the grid's perennial underdogs, before ending his Formula 1 career. Ninety-five starts made him one of the most experienced Japanese drivers of his generation, even if the machinery at his disposal rarely allowed more than that solitary points haul.