Formula One Features — May 1996

There are two approaches to winning the Indycar series: either design a chassis and sell it to as many teams as possible to maximise the chances of being part of the right combination of team, driver, engine and tyres for that year; or control every aspect of the combination by producing the chassis in house, developing a long term involvement with the engine and tyre suppliers, and picking your own drivers.

Just before Christmas 1995 a Honda official in Tokyo told a Dow Jones reporter that Honda would probably start "a discussion over getting back into F1 racing" in the course of 1996. Sure enough, at the San Marino Grand Prix, Yoshinobu Noguchi, project leader of the Honda Motor Sport Department, arrived in the F1 paddock. Noguchi is no stranger to Grand Prix racing having been integrally involved in the McLaren-Honda programme in the late 1980s.

In the autumn of 1993 Jos Verstappen - veteran of just two years of single seater racing - sat in an Arrows for the first time at

Every so often, Formula 1 throws up a big surprise. The 1996 Monaco Grand Prix will be remembered as just such a race.