The F1 underdog thwarted by its bazooka-seeking owner

It's a tale involving a snake, laundry bags stuffed with Belgian francs, a Porsche set on fire in downtown Brussels and the search for a bazooka.

Yet the most remarkable thing about the Onyx squad's maiden season of Formula 1 in 1989 was the success it enjoyed with a car that didn't turn a proper lap prior to the first race weekend. Imagine a team stepping up from Formula 2 today and making it onto the podium in year one after building up its machinery in the pits at Melbourne. Yet Onyx did the equivalent of that just over 30 years ago after making the move from Formula 3000.

Its pair of Cosworth DFV-engined ORE-1s were barely finished when they briefly took to the track at the Brazilian Grand Prix in March, yet the best of them had scored points by the middle of the year. Before the season was out, lead driver Stefan Johansson would add to his points tally with a famous podium at Estoril.

What makes it all the more amazing was that the F1 entry that year boasted no fewer than 39 cars, and 13 of them, the two Onyxes included, had to fight through a one-hour prequalifying session at an indecent hour on Friday morning. Four cars went into qualifying proper, and for the rest it was weekend over.

As for the bundles of cash, city-centre pyrotechnics and ballistic weapons, they were part of the backdrop to the team's highs and lows provided by a maverick backer who became the British team's majority shareholder during the summer.

The late Jean-Pierre Van Rossem, described by Autosport that season as looking like "an out-of-work sumo wrestler", kept Onyx on track and the rest of the F1 paddock entertained. The Belgian can't be blamed for the snake, though.

Van Rossem and his slightly shady Moneytron investment company that provided the bulk of the team's budget are inextricably linked to the tale of Onyx. But the story of the operation from the south coast of England moving to the big time predated his involvement by the better part of 18 months.

Onyx boss Mike Earle wasn't new to F1, though by his own admission he'd only ever "dealt around the peripheries", first with David Purley in 1973 and 1977, and again with Emilio de Villota in 1982 after starting Onyx in 1979. With Stefano Modena leading the 1987 F3000 points in an Onyx-run factory March and turbocharged engines on their way out in F1, Earle reckoned it was "time to give F1 another go".

"We effectively built up the cars in the pits at Rio, mostly out of bits brought out in suitcases. We didn't have the money until the last minute" Alan Jenkins

The initial plan was for Onyx to become a Marlboro B-team for 1988 courtesy of its links with the tobacco brand. Not only was Modena sponsored by Marlboro, but Onyx was a key player in its driver development programme. Earle brought in former McLaren designer and engineer Alan Jenkins on the advice of old mate John Watson.

"Wattie was a good friend of mine and a good friend of Jenks's," recalls Earle.

"Jenks had been at McLaren and worked alongside John Barnard, so I thought he must have soaked up lot of his experience and expertise."

Jenkins left his role with the Penske CART squad to join Onyx in the autumn of 1987, but he admits that he was doubtful the team would make it to F1 in 1988 even before Marlboro decided not to go through with its plan.

"There wasn't really an Onyx F1 team at that point," says Jenkins (below right with Bertrand Gachot), who had engineered Watson and Alain Prost at McLaren in 1983 and 1984 respectively.

"It was just me and a drawing board in my bedroom. It was never going to happen for 1988."

Earle and Jenkins have differing opinions on whether Onyx would have actually reached F1 the following year without Van Rossem. Earle says, "yes, but not in the manner that we eventually did it", while Jenkins is more forthright.

"Van Rossem's money was what got it all started again," he says.

The deal was brokered by Pascal Witmeur, a mover and shaker in Belgian motorsport. The Le Mans 24 Hours regular approached his fellow countryman after encountering an old friend, who recounted that he'd just sold Van Rossem his 11th Ferrari. Witmeur was looking for sponsorship to take Eric van de Poele into F3000, but when Van Rossem said he was only interested in F1, he decided to pass the contact to old friend Bertrand Gachot.

"Bertrand reckoned he didn't have time to go to see this guy, but I told him very clearly to do it," recalls Witmeur. "Fortunately he did."

Onyx already had one driver under contract by the time Gachot and the Moneytron money arrived. Johansson (below left with engine-builder Brian Hart, Jenkins and Earle) had signed as early as the Australian GP weekend the previous November after local property developer Paul Shakespeare bought into the team that autumn and allowed it to push on with its F1 plans.

Just as Jenkins had been recommended by Watson, so the designer put forward Johansson's name. They'd been together at Ron Dennis's Project 4 team in 1980. The Swede won the 1980 British Formula 3 Championship, while the Brit worked in a tiny office known as the fish tank alongside Barnard and Steve Nichols on what would eventually become the revolutionary carbon-chassis McLaren MP4/1.

Onyx had a glitzy - "tasteless", cried Autosport - launch at the Hippodrome, then a nightclub rather than the casino of today, in London's Leicester Square in March 1989. The car on display was taken straight to Heathrow for dispatch to Rio de Janeiro for an official pre-season test directly ahead of the Brazilian GP, but it wasn't anywhere near a runner.

"The car at the Hippodrome was far from finished," recalls Jenkins.

"We sent the drivers out and the first thing we could hear was the cars on the rev-limiter down the back straight. I'd got top gear wrong!" Alan Jenkins

"We effectively built up the cars in the pits at Rio, mostly out of bits brought out in suitcases. It wasn't that you could blame anyone; it was just that we didn't have the money until the last minute."

Autosport recounted that the nosebox collapsed on Johansson on his first lap out of the pits on the Jacarepagua circuit. Once a new one arrived from the UK - presumably in another suitcase - Johansson went back out. This time it was the car's gearbox that broke before he could complete a lap.

The newcomer desperately needed some kind of running before heading into the pre-qualifying shoot-out and the team found a local kart track at which it could undertake a shakedown of sorts. Again, the run came to a premature halt, at least initially, thanks to the aforementioned snake.

"We'd put some planks on a pickup truck so we could put the car on it to get it to this kart place," recalls Johansson.

"I was going down the tiny front straight and ran over a gigantic snake. All I remember was seeing it flying up in the air. I was convinced that it had come down in the cockpit. I've got a real phobia about snakes, so I was on the brakes and out of the car before the thing had stopped."

Not surprisingly, neither Johansson nor Gachot made it through prequalifying.

"Everything was a guesstimate," recalls Jenkins. "We sent the drivers out and the first thing we could hear was the cars on the rev-limiter down the back straight. I'd got top gear wrong!"

But Johansson wasn't dismayed: "You could tell the car was good even in those first few laps in Rio. The car felt right."

The ORE-1 wasn't quite the conventional kitcar that it might have appeared. It was designed on CAD, using the facilities of automotive specialist IAD in Brighton, and had a bespoke Xtrac transverse gearbox to, says Jenkins, "get the weight between the axles to make the thing change direction better".

"I remember Patrick Head wandering down the pitlane in Rio and looking at the car," he recalls. "He said, 'well, you're brave'."

Onyx came through prequalifying for the first time with Johansson at round four at Mexico City after a near-miss in Monaco. In France both cars made it into qualifying proper and Johansson finished fifth from 13th on the grid. Gachot, who'd outqualified his more experienced team-mate in 11th, would have been sixth had a battery lead not come loose.

A points score so early was an impressive result for an F1 newbie, but what it achieved three months later at the Portuguese GP seems outlandish by today's standards. Reliability played its part, but so did twin gambles made by the team.

"Once we got on top of the car we knew we could qualify well if we got out of prequalifying," explains Jenkins.

"We'd be knocking on the top 10, but as the season went on it was becoming that much harder to get up there. I spent a long time with Brian Hart in the run-up to the race asking if there was anything we could do to find an extra 10 or 12bhp to put the car a couple of places further up the grid. We eventually came up with quite a complex change to the oil system for a qualifying-only engine."

Van Rossem was never one to pull his punches in public and was loose tongued in the extreme when it came to dealing with the press in his homeland

The second gamble was to run non-stop through the race on one set of Goodyears.

"That was the whole strategy from the beginning and we always felt a podium was a possibility if we executed well," says Johansson.

"We ran two laps on the tyres in practice before putting them to one side to cure. You might be a tenth or two off at the beginning, but you could gain that back 10 times over."

From 12th on the grid, Johansson passed four cars in the opening eight laps. His progress up the order continued when the pitstops began. The Swede was running fifth when Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna had their famous coming together. Riccardo Patrese briefly pushed the Onyx out of the podium positions before retiring with overheating.

It was a close-run thing for Johansson, the hard-worked left-front tyre shot by the finish.

"There was no rubber left across half the tyre and I could see the steel radials," says Johansson.

"I was just hoping that that the thing wasn't going to go pop through that long last corner."

The Onyx also ran out of fuel on the slowing-down lap, which meant Johansson was late to the podium. By that time race winner Gerhard Berger had buggered off, leaving the Swede to celebrate with second-placed Alain Prost.

The lack of fuel and worn tyres very nearly resulted in the exclusion of the Onyx. Jenkins reveals that the car was on the cusp of failing post-race scrutineering, the digital scales fluttering at just under the minimum weight.

"Then someone pulled up rollerdoors on the scrutineering bay, the wind blew in and the read-out flicked onto the minimum," he recalls.

"Charlie [Whiting, F1 technical delegate] quickly said, 'right, you're through, I've got a plane to catch'."

For all the euphoria of a podium, all wasn't well at Onyx. Van Rossem (below, right) had bought Shakespeare's shares in the team, and he and Earle had more or less stopped speaking as the new owner became ever more unpredictable.

"In Phoenix he told me to rent a bazooka," recalls Witmeur.

"I asked him what he was going to do with a bazooka? 'I want to put one million dollars in it and spray it into the tribunes,' he said. 'Then I will have instant worldwide publicity'. The problem was that the law in America didn't actually allow you to do that."

Van Rossem was never one to pull his punches in public and was loose tongued in the extreme when it came to dealing with the press in his homeland. Onyx was chasing a deal for the forthcoming Porsche V12 engine for 1991, which came with a reputed $40million price tag (£25million), and declared that if he didn't get it, he'd wave goodbye to F1.

Onyx had what Earle calls "a skeleton of an agreement" to use the engine. All parties agreed to stay shtum while the details were thrashed out, only for the news to be plastered over the Belgian newspapers the following day. It was clear who had told them.

The Porsche deal eventually went to Arrows with backing from future owner Footwork and Van Rossem remained true to his word.

"Some of the things Monteverdi was talking about doing were quite frankly dangerous, he couldn't get his head around the idea that everything on the car had to be lifed" Mike Earle

"After we had to tell Van Rossem that the Porsche deal had been cancelled, I got a phone call telling me that he'd taken his Porsche road car down to central Brussels and set it on fire," says Earle.

"I thought, well that shows them."

Van Rossem was keeping the team afloat, though getting the money wasn't always easy. Johansson remembers "sitting in his office in Antwerp with Alan telling him we weren't leaving until we got the money" on more than one occasion.

Johansson wouldn't see one dollar of his own retainer until the penultimate round of the season in Japan: "I was staying in Tokyo for a few days to get over the jet lag when Van Rossem calls me at something like nine in the evening, asking if I could get over to the Imperial Palace hotel.

"Up in his massive suite, he has this suitcase full of cash. It was my salary for the year - in Belgian francs, which at the time was something like 40 to the dollar. Then he asks for the bag back! So I had to stuff this money into three laundry bags and walk out of the hotel."

The decline of Onyx was swift. Earle and longtime partner Joe Chamberlain walked shortly after the final race of the season and Jenkins scrabbled a budget together for the opening weekend of the 1990 season.

It was in the US that it emerged that the team had been sold to Peter Monteverdi, a sometime niche manufacturer of sportscars in Switzerland. Earle returned, only to quickly depart for a second time, aghast at some of Monteverdi's ideas. They included moving Onyx to Switzerland.

"Some of the things he was talking about doing were quite frankly dangerous," recalls Earle. "He couldn't get his head around the idea that everything on the car had to be lifed."

Monteverdi did manage to transfer the team's operations to his homeland and performances declined along with reliability. Gregor Foitek, who had replaced Johansson alongside JJ Lehto, walked away from the team after a repaired suspension component failed on him at the Hungaroring. His team-mate failed to qualify too, and no more of a team that had been allowed to change its name to that of its new owner was seen.

It was an ignominious end for an outfit that had promised so much.

"It is a sad story in many ways, but to get a podium so early still ranks as one of the great days I remember," says Jenkins. "I had a reasonably long career and I was lucky to win a lot of races with Alain, so there are quite a few days to think of."