While many pundits are asking when Jenson Button can bring home BAR's maiden victory, his teammate has an equal opportunity to bring home glory to Japan. Autosport-Atlas's Thomas O'Keefe takes a look at the Japanese pilots history, and likes what he sees

Location, Location, Location. The first rule of real estate also has its counterpart in Formula One. It will not become apparent to Formula One TV viewers until the garage doors open up at Melbourne, but BAR-Honda, by virtue of the teams astonishing second place finish in the 2004 Constructors' Championship, finds itself in the privileged position of occupying the garage in the pit lane next door to Ferrari for the 2005 season, tangible proof that Honda power has finally boosted the formerly hapless BAR team to the front ranks, poised now to take on the Champions from Maranello.

But which BAR-Honda driver has the goods to put the Honda-team-in-waiting over the top and into the first garage? Conventional wisdom says that it is Jenson Button, matinee idol of the pitlane, uncrowned British Formula One Champion, the driver who at Imola in 2004 took Honda's first pole position as quasi-constructor since John Surtees at Monza in 1968, the driver who thrillingly chased down Jarno Trulli's Renault in the closing laps of the Monaco Grand Prix in 2004, the driver who fair-and-square won an overtaking battle with no less a charger than Fernando Alonso at Hockenheim in 2004 and the driver who with his 10 podiums in 2004 put the team where it now finds itself, next door to Ferrari. The only knock on Jenson - though a significant one - is that he can't win, that he cannot or will not summon up what it takes to get around the red car.

And yet, notwithstanding Button's off track errors of judgment so fully on display in the Buttongate imbroglio in 2004 and the inevitable knock-on effect such an attempted exodus must have on the team in 2005, no one is picking Jenson's less celebrated and less experienced teammate, Takuma Sato, to be the man who will take Honda to the Promised Land. But in my view, Sato has all the right skills, is at the optimal point in his career to take the kind of stride forward that will take Honda to the top and most importantly, has demonstrated already that he has that indefinable quality that every champion has – true grit, fire in the belly, the will to win – choose your bromide, but Sato has it in his bones and in every sinew of his being.

Although Jenson talks a good game, churlishly saying of Michael Schumacher “I don't think he's exceptional,” but he has yet to back up those words with deeds; indeed, in the few times when Michael and Jenson were eyeball to eyeball in the 2004 season – most memorably at Monza – it was not the German who came up short.

Just to the contrary, Takuma Sato, with less than half the Formula One experience of Button (Sato has had 36 starts vs. Button's 84 starts), has convinced me that he is continuously (and imaginatively) searching for a way to muscle whatever car he has under him as far and as fast as it will carry him. Every single outing Sato has had in either the a Jordan or BAR, he has taken it to the max; if that meant taking on his betters it mattered not in the slightest to Sato, who goes all out, all the time, as he battles his swashbuckling way through Formula One.

The battle for Takuma Sato began under the tutelage of Eddie Jordan, known to have spotted the occasional diamond in the rough, when Sato was paired during the 2002 season with veteran Giancarlo Fisichella in the Jordan-Honda EJ12. Sato's dramatic up-and-down rookie season kept the otherwise unremarkable Jordan team in the headlines all season long.

In Australia for the first race of the 2002 season, the Melbourne track was wet during practice and qualifying, robbing rookie Takuma Sato of valuable track time at a circuit he had never driven before. To compound the weekend's problems, because of mechanical glitches, Sato crashed his race car and then had to abandon the T-car when it developed a hydraulic problem in the gearbox. By the time Sato got out to qualify on Saturday, the circumstances were not promising: the track was wet, he was in Fisichella's car with a dry suspension set up, wet tires and a pedal configuration that suited Fisichella better than Sato.

Not surprisingly, Sato's times were not within the so-called 107% rule that prevailed at the time, but the FIA Stewards decided that Sato had endured “exceptional circumstances” and allowed him to race as the anchor man on the grid in 22nd position. This was Sato's only lucky break that weekend and, although he diced with and overtook Pedro de la Rosa's Jaguar after a restart and was up to as high as 7th place because of the attrition caused by a lap 1 accident, electronic gremlins in the gearbox plagued the newcomer and he was forced to retire from the race after 12 laps.

The whole 2002 season, in varying degrees, would be like his weekend in Melbourne for Sato; his bright yellow Jordan always figuring somehow into the controversies of the day, even though the Jordan team itself was not one of the noteworthy teams that season.

In Malaysia, Sato climbed up the backside of his teammate Fisichella's Jordan while trying to stay out of the way, putting his teammate out, a violation of Rule No. 1: do no harm to your teammate.

In Austria, Sato was the victim of someone else's accident, when Nick Heidfeld's Sauber failed to brake properly approaching the Remus turn and T-boned Sato's Jordan-Honda, crushing the front of the monocoque where Sato's feet were and putting a hole in the carbon fibre tub, which was so crushed that Sato could not get out of the car without being extracted. Unlike say, Kimi Raikkonen, Sato did not push around marshals or lay blame after the incident but calmly accepted that he was a victim of someone else's mistake. Nick Heidfeld looked more shook up than the seemingly indestructible Sato, who, to be sure, has seen his share of crashes.

In the 2002 Monaco Grand Prix, the two Jordan-Hondas were again close together on the track racing for position when the team ordered Sato to move over and make way for Fisichella. As Sato was attempting to let his teammate by in the tunnel, he slid over onto the dusty offline surface as he moved over, losing control of the car, careening out of the tunnel after hitting the tunnel wall and spinning downhill towards the chicane, the same kind of mistake the higher-rated Alonso made in the tunnel at Monaco in 2004, with similar results. Luckily for the Jordan team, Fisichella recovered and actually finished in 5th place for Jordan-Honda, but Sato was out of the race.

At the Nurburgring, it was Fisichella's turn to make a mistake and he hit Sato on lap 1, damaging both cars.

With setbacks like these, it was a relief to have a race like Hockenheim, where Sato qualified in 12th place, his best grid position of the year, and backed it up with an 8th place finish in the race, Sato's best result of the year thus far, clawing ever closer to scoring his first points in Formula One. It is significant that the reconfigured track at Hockenheim – which was new to all 20 drivers – seemed to level the playing field for Sato, since unlike the other drivers he was seeing many of the other Grand Prix circuits for the first time.

At Magny-Cours in 2002, I remember watching the spirited Sato throughout the weekend charging the old Lycee corner just before the main straight before it was re-profiled, and his performance and experimentation with how to conquer this off-camber, downhill, twisting corner was like watching an artist at work in his studio: a little dab here, a little dab there, back to the palette for a little more color, step back for a look and then back to the canvas.

After a season of such struggle, Sato was thrilled to finally make his debut at his home track, Suzuka, the place where he saw his first Formula One race as a ten year-old and first laid eyes on the red Ferrari that is now his quarry. That day, Gerhard Berger in his Ferrari F187 won that very first race at the Suzuka circuit in the 1987 Japanese Grand Prix, with Ayrton Senna's bright yellow Lotus 99T-Honda in 2nd place. Senna's Lotus-Honda teammate, Satoru Nakajima, was also in the points in 6th place.

Takuma Sato would do ever better than Nakajima when he came along, and would begin to rewrite the record books for Japanese drivers at the 2002 Japanese Grand Prix, which was run before an enthusiastic home crowd of 155,000 fans. Sato qualified in 7th place on the grid, ahead of Fisichella in 8th; based upon the reaction of the crowd, you would have thought he had qualified on pole position! For a change, Sato's luck held out for an entire weekend and he finished the race in 5th place, Sato's highest career finish, his first points and a fitting way to end a frustrating year with Jordan. Although Michael Schumacher won the race, and a fifth World Drivers' Championship that day, even Schumacher graciously acknowledged, diplomatically, that he was sharing the spotlight with the popular Sato, saying “today the Japanese fans have two winners, with me winning the Grand Prix and Sato taking his first points in his home Grand Prix.”

After the triumph of Suzuka 2002, Sato switched from Jordan to BAR-Honda, where he became a test and reserve driver behind 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, who had been with BAR from the outset, and Jenson Button, who was just joining the team for the 2003 season. Sato, following the same route as Fernando Alonso had traversed at Renault the season before, fully expected to spend a full season carrying out the test program for BAR-Honda before returning as a principal driver.

But, once again, lightning struck at Suzuka and, as Sato was traveling to the track for Suzuka 2003 via the Bullet Train to be there just in case he was needed, he received word from BAR-Honda team manager David Richards that Sato would be replacing Jacques Villeneuve at the Japanese Grand Prix, Villeneuve having stepped down. Dreams do come true after all: Sato would drive a car for a Japanese team at Suzuka, the track where he had discovered Formula One racing.

Sato did not squander the opportunity; nor did his countrymen, as 160,000 enthusiastic fans were on hand for the race, making it a sell-out and the best attended race in Suzuka's 16-year history.

For the first time in his Formula One career, the Racing Gods seem to be favoring Sato: after a year of testing for BAR-Honda, he knew the car and his engineers well, he knew the Suzuka circuit reasonably well and the BAR-Honda car itself had just reached its zenith two weeks earlier at Indianapolis, where Jenson Button had the distinction of leading the U.S. Grand Prix for 15 laps in dreadful wet/dry conditions, a first both for Button and the BAR-Honda team.

During qualifying, Sato showed that he was in his element, turning in better times in first qualifying than did his teammate Button. A detailed look at the telemetry explained Sato's quick times: unlike his teammate Button and most drivers, Sato was flat out through the daunting and super fast 130 R.

After final qualifying Sato ended up in 13th place behind Button in 9th place on the grid, and soon enough Sato again found himself back in the thick of things again, for better or worse, when Michael Schumacher, whose agenda that day was to hurry back up through the field after qualifying an abysmal 14th on the grid to finish in the points and score an unprecedented sixth World Championship.

Sato stood in the way of that goal and so for once it was Schumacher chasing Sato, not the other way around. Schumacher described the race as “a very tough race, honestly, probably one of my toughest,” and Schumacher's cat-and-mouse game with the canny Sato was a large part of a tough afternoon. The Ferrari driver's pursuit of Sato came to a head on lap 6 at the famous Suzuka Chicane, where Schumacher uncharacteristically made a wrong move in attempting to pass Sato, with the German perhaps thinking he could intimidate the rookie to moving over by filling up the BAR-Honda's mirrors with Ferrari red. But Sato held his ground. Said Sato afterwards: “I had a close call with Michael in the chicane, but I had the line. He came up on the inside of me.”

When Schumacher realized that he was in over his head it was too late and the Ferrari's front wing was ripped off and folded in under the car, requiring Schumacher to pit for a new wing and to fight his way back through the field once again. Sato's BAR-Honda was not damaged in the incident and he finished in the points once again at Suzuka. Button's 4th place at Suzuka and Sato's 6th place gained BAR-Honda 5th place position in the Constructor's Championship, ahead of Sauber, Jaguar, Toyota, Jordan and Minardi.

When Sato returned to BAR-Honda as a full-time driver for the 2004 season, teamed with Button, in six of the first 10 races the Honda engine in the back of Sato's car detonated, ruining very quickly any chance of a decent season, while Jenson's car during the same period carried him to his first pole position and several podiums. But so long as Sato's engines held up, the plucky Japanese driver put on some brilliant moves that suggest how well he might have done had the Honda V10 not let him down so often in 2004.

In the inaugural 2004 Bahrain Grand Prix, Sato injected lots of excitement late in the race by aggressively passing David Coulthard's McLaren-Mercedes in Turn 1; earlier in the race, Sato also challenged Ralf Schumacher at Turn 2 in a way that Ralf will not soon forget, leaving Schumacher skidding off the track (Ralf later receiving an FIA warning for his conduct) after not expecting that Sato would have the acceleration as well as the sheer gumption to go to wheel-to-wheel with the First Brother in such tight quarters. Sato knew from the quick times Anthony Davidson's BAR-Honda No. 35 turned through Turns 1 and 2 during Friday practice that the low-down grunt of the Honda would give him the spurt of acceleration needed to the get the BAR's nose ahead of the Williams-BMW.

At Monaco, the creative bent to Sato's mind was fully on display when he timed his start on the streets of Monte Carlo perfectly and launched the BAR-Honda from his qualifying spot in seventh place to fourth place, literally squeezing himself between Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher and rubbing his Michelins against Schumacher's right front Bridgestone in a move that was so daring that Schumacher took one look in his Ferrari's miniscule mirror and moved over. Sato's massive engine failure three laps later on the waterfront robbed us of yet another what-might-have-been.

At the Nurburgring, Sato, on fresh Michelins, took on the other Ferrari of Rubens Barrichello in a breathtaking overtaking-by-outbraking gambit that ended in tears in the Mercedes turn as the two cars tangled, damaging the wing on the BAR-Honda and the barge board of Ferrari No. 2. By this time, Ferrari management was on to Takuma; the long knives came out for young Sato, with Rubens calling the move “amateurish.” Barrichello seems to have overlooked the fact that Sato had the faster car that weekend, Sato having qualified on the front row, a historic second place on the grid to Michael Schumacher, while Barrichello had qualified well down in 7th place.

The other highlight of Sato's 2004 season was the U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis, where he joined the Inner Circle, qualifying third on the grid and finishing third in the race for his first podium. When the Safety Car came out for Ralf Schumacher's accident on the front straightaway, Sato slowly picked his way through the debris and then stayed out per instructions from the team during the clean-up, while Michael Schumacher came in for a quick pit stop. When the race was re-started, Sato once again took it to the Champion for four laps before pitting and then, re-joining in ninth place, handily overtaking David Coulthard's McLaren-Mercedes (as he had in Bahrain) and three others to claw his way back to third place behind the Ferraris as the best of the BAR-Honda's, Button having retired from third with gearbox trouble.

How significant was it for Honda and Sato to get on the podium? In attaining his first podium at Indianapolis 2004, Takuma Sato has officially become the most successful Japanese driver in the history of Formula One, piling up 39 points and surpassing pioneer Satoru Nakajima (16 points) and Aguri Suzuki, who, until Sato, held the top substantive spot amongst the Japanese drivers for his third place finish at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, driving a Lola-Lamborghini 3.5 liter V12 for the Espo Larrousse F1 team, an achievement that was not equaled for 14 years.

The Japanese driver sweepstakes now stand as follows: Nakajima was the first to drive for a full season. Aguri Suzuki and Sato are the only ones to achieve a podium. Nakajima and one other Japanese driver, Masahiro Hasemi, are the only two to score fastest laps, with Hasemi doing so in a remarkable way, in his only Grand Prix appearance in a Kojima-Ford at the rain-soaked inaugural 1976 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji, the race where conditions were so bad that Niki Lauda stepped out of his Ferrari 312 T2 and let the World Drivers' Championship go to James Hunt in the McLaren M23. Ukyo Katayama has run the most Grands Prix at 94 races. Sato is the only Japanese driver to have qualified on the front row. In time, Sato is likely to eclipse all these records.

Admittedly, Sato has pulled the occasional boner of a move but his history tells me that Sato's heart and head are every bit the equal of his more highly-touted teammate and that the inevitable maturation of the 2004 season has set him up for the best season of his career in 2005. It is sometimes forgotten that Takuma Sato knows what it is like to be a winner, having chalked up 12 race wins in British F3 driving for Carlin Motorsport (besting his teammate at Carlin (and now again at BAR-Honda), Super Third Driver Anthony Davidson) and at the prestigious specialty races like Macau, Zandvoort and Silverstone in International F3 racing.

Is it so unimaginable that, with his track record as a winner and the high-revving Jiffy-Shift Honda behind him, it might be Sato rather than Button that takes the honor of being the first driver to win a race for what is essentially the Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Grand Prix team since Monza 1967, when John Surtees brought his 3 liter V12 Hondola home ahead of Jack Brabham's Brabham? Don't count the jockey-size Samurai out; for all the brave talk, you can be sure that Jenson Button knows that Sato is fully capable of being the driver lucky enough to pull off BAR-Honda's first win.

If the engines hold up as well as Sato does, the internal struggle between the Boys Next Door should be one of the highlights of the 2005 season.

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