Cult heroes

Tetsu Ikuzawa

An ex-art student who narrowly failed to make it to Formula One, both as a driver and as a team owner, Tetsu Ikuzawa played a role in the careers of Frank Williams, Geoff Lees and Satoru Nakajima.

Ikuzawa started on motorbikes before switching to cars in 1963 and making his name in Nissan saloons. In ’67 he moved to Europe and, with Frank Williams’s Brabham, won a string of F3 races in ’68 and ’69.

Tetsu moved up to Formula Two with a Lotus and took sixth place in the 1970 European series, but failed to match his rookie season in subsequent campaigns. He returned home and won a Grand Champion sportscar title in ’77.

He then set up Team Ikuzawa, which would field JPS-liveried March-Hondas for both Geoff Lees and Satoru Nakajima to win Japanese F2 titles in the early80s. This nearly metamorphosed into the Ikuzawa International F1 team in the mid-90s. Enrique Scalabroni was hired to design the car, but the project was canned in ’96. These days he’s based in London, working in promotion and management. M S