The 62-year-old head of Honda Racing Development has been working for the company since he was 23, and is now responsible for supplying power and noise to the BARs of Jenson Button and Takuma Sato.
Intelligent and outspoken, he is to HRD what Mario Illien is to Ilmor, Mario Theissen is to BMW Motorsport, or Paolo Martinelli is to Ferrari - which is why it is so surprising that the average Formula One fan would walk past him without a second glance. Tanaka-San may not go out of his way to avoid publicity - people who want to do that do not go on the record as saying that "The championship is fixed in favour of Ferrari and therefore is not a sport," as he did to Autosport earlier this year.
"Racing," Honda likes to say, "is in our DNA." If that's true, then you could probably argue that Honda is part of the DNA of Shoichi Tanaka.
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