The driver who should have been Japan's first F1 winner

The driver of the red-and-white, Lark cigarettes-liveried March-BMW lay injured in his cockpit, in severe pain.

Seventy laps of the short circuit at Donington Park was hard work for anyone, let alone a 35-year-old for whom this had been the first race in Europe for five years.

That driver, 10 to 15 years the senior of most of his opposition, had just finished fourth in the latest round of the European Formula 2 Championship.

That driver was arguably the greatest racer Japan has ever produced.

Seven years before that F2 race at Donington in June 1983, Kazuyoshi Hoshino had already starred in the torrential rain of the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji.

But, if you want to be cynical, you could put it down to the wet-weather Bridgestone tyres (this was the first time the company appeared in Formula 1) he had fitted to his car - an old Tyrrell that had been the works team's spare the year before.

Two years later, in 1985, he would win the typhoon-truncated Fuji round of the World Endurance Championship single-handedly in his March-Nissan by over a lap.

But, being cynical again, you could point to those Bridgestones, and the fact that the European teams had pulled their cars into the pits before the green flag, citing impossible weather conditions.

The win in the 1992 Daytona 24 Hours; the podium in the 1998 Le Mans 24 Hours - both with Nissan? Yes, but endurance racing was all about finishing in those days, not a true reflection of speed.

But here is a guy who also won the 1993 Japanese Formula 3000 Championship, aged 46, against future F1 stars including Eddie Irvine, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Mika Salo.

"I can't do anything well besides being the fastest driver. It's my only talent" Kazuyoshi Hoshino

Heck, he was still good enough to place third in the points in 1996, when he was 49. A young Ralf Schumacher won the title that year.

"When Ralf came to Japan, he was always checking my car," chuckles Hoshino in an amused 'my-reputation-went-before-me' anecdote.

"He was, 'Oh, this is Hoshino - now I know!' Schumacher was learning off me."

And, OK, you could channel that cynicism and say that Hoshino was just putting his experience to good use. But Donington in 1983 was different. On this occasion, he was the interloper in a foreign culture, the one lacking experience.

Take out the Ralt-Hondas that finished 1-2 in the hands of Jonathan Palmer and Mike Thackwell - those cars had so much downforce and cornering speed that they could hardly lose around the sweeps of Donington.

So that leaves Hoshino finishing a mere five seconds behind the only car he could realistically have beaten: the AGS-BMW of Philippe Streiff, and ahead of drivers of the calibre of Stefan Bellof, Kenny Acheson and Christian Danner.

But Hoshino was in a bad way. Due to an ill-fitting seat, a disc in his back was crushed by half-distance, and he collapsed as he finally got out of the car and was taken to hospital. Not that he made anything of it - or makes much of it to this day.

"Because I was ashamed as a professional to show any problems, I didn't want to blame the result on my back," he recalls. "I was doing my best."

And, in doing so, he was showing his superstar potential.

The Great Man, whose Team Impul squad he established in the 1980s is still a leading light in Japan's Super Formula and Super GT championships, granted Autosport an audience at the Sugo Super Formula round last June.

He speaks no English, we speak no Japanese, so the interview takes place via the series' indispensable interpreter Sonia Ito. Hoshino, who will celebrate his 72nd birthday a few weeks later, is genuinely funny and a cracking bloke.

The Beatles were breaking through when he began competing on motorcycles: "If I had long legs and was handsome, I would be a pop star," he guffaws. "But because I'm not, I was a top racing driver. I can't do anything well besides being the fastest driver. It's my only talent."

Later he modifies this, the one-liners and digressions continuing as he explains the decision to set up his own team after so much 1970s success in F2 with Heros Racing.

"After I had learned so much [at Heros] I became confident I could make my own business, so I did it," he says. "My two goals in life were to become a racing champion, and also a business champion in the racing world."

Hoshino's path to this began in motocross, where he won Japanese titles through the 1960s with Kawasaki before he emerged as the most promising talent in a Nissan recruitment test, and was picked to move into touring car racing in 1969.

"For me it was just two more tyres," he says. "I used to ride on two tyres, now I had four. I was ready, I was very confident. With Nissan [for which he started in a Skyline] we had only three races a year, but I was the one with more circuit time than anyone. I would test all the cars for everything.

"Scheckter told me, 'When you're being lapped, wave left hand or right hand, that's how you communicate'. I was so upset" Kazuyoshi Hoshino

"I did rallies as well, all these different categories. No time to go to the gym! I was always training in different cars, different categories, driving, driving, driving, so it was a very happy time for me."

In 1974, by which time he was already 26, Hoshino made his single-seater debut in the FJ1300 class in a Nissan-powered March F3 chassis, winning on his debut.

He carried that momentum into an F2 taster in the end-of-season JAF Grand Prix at Suzuka, taking third place in a Surtees. The following year, he became champion in F2 machinery at the wheel of a March-BMW, and joined top team Heros Racing for 1976.

When the F1 circus visited Japan for the first time that October, Hoshino was at the wheel of the modified Heros Tyrrell, while his friend and rival Masahiro Hasemi steered the brand-new Kojima chassis (below). Both starred over the weekend.

"Hasemi-san was another person who came from motorcycles," smiles Hoshino.

"We were rivals from day one, first from the bikes and then with four wheels. We were always glued together and stepped up together.

"It's good, because we were always competing against each other and it really helped us to grow as drivers all the time."

Hoshino started that famous Fuji race, which crowned James Hunt as world champion, from 21st slot on the 25-car grid. To his irritation, works Tyrrell driver Jody Scheckter approached him before the getaway: "He told me, 'When you're being lapped, wave left hand or right hand, that's how you communicate'.

"I was so upset. We had no chance in the dry, but in the wet..."

Within a few laps, Hoshino had stormed up the field, and when he passed the six-wheeled P34 of Scheckter for third position the crowd went wild: "I was really aiming for that one chance; I couldn't miss that chance in the wet.

"They said, 'Oh, that's because you're used to that track', but now I'm admired for that great move [on Scheckter]."

Sadly, the Bridgestones were wearing out, and he pitted twice before retiring: "We didn't have enough tyres, we didn't have enough wheels, we didn't have enough equipment to win the race."

Hoshino qualified 11th for the 1977 Japanese GP at the wheel of the follow-up Kojima, but his main focus remained on his domestic programme with Heros - he drove the team's Nova-BMW to titles in 1977 and 1978.

The team also made a mid-season visit in the latter year to the European F2 rounds at Rouen (below) and Donington.

"I did my best to succeed and do lots in Europe, but I believe I was too old" Kazuyoshi Hoshino

"That Nova wasn't perfect compared to the European chassis," says Hoshino.

"I really wanted to race in Europe and try how it felt, but I was born too early. For my generation [Hoshino was already in his early thirties] the timing wasn't there. For Satoru Nakajima and Ukyo Katayama, they were ready.

"I did my best to succeed and do lots in Europe, but I believe I was too old."

Nakajima became his biggest opponent in Japanese F2 in the early 1980s and, as the younger man went to F1 with Lotus, Hoshino at last got an international break: with Nissan in the Le Mans 24 Hours, where he would compete from 1986-90 and again from 1995-98.

The greatest moment came in that last year when, aged 50, he shared the R390 with Aguri Suzuki and Masahiko Kageyama to third position.

"We were just trying not to get into trouble, not to go too fast in the long stints but keep a very regular pace," he relates.

"In France all the ladies with their grandchildren were cheering for us!"

It was a culture shock for a man from a conservative background: "If you're in Japan and you're riding a bike it's, 'No, no, no, you're no good, bad reputation'. But in Europe it's, 'Oh, racing driver. Fantastic'.

"So we were stars in Europe, like baseball players in Japan. I envy people like Michael Schumacher, treated as racers and superstars."

Hoshino had already won the Daytona 24 Hours in 1992 (below), sharing the NISMO Nissan R92CP with Hasemi and Toshio Suzuki and obliterating the field to win by nine laps from the leading Jaguar, having been 19 laps ahead at one point.

Not a particularly memorable race apart from the victory, and Hoshino takes this as his cue to discuss his non-reliance on physical conditioning.

"Nissan had a lot of trainers," he says. "I'm very soft here [he points to his calves] compared to others, and the trainers were surprised how soft in the muscles I was, so no need for massage because they said, 'You have so much power, you don't get stiff'.

"I'm full of muscle always, and this is not because I've trained my body, it's because I was born this way.

"I'm lucky. When I was on my bike my body was a shock absorber, and I was doing races when the economy in Japan was starting to boom, so I grew with Japan - I was winning 20,000 yen [equivalent to £140 on today's exchange rate!] for each championship.

"Now there is so much budget for sport - if that type of money came to motorsport it would be fantastic for educating young drivers. Honda and Toyota have their 'students' [their young driver programmes], but Nissan has problems now with Carlos Ghosn so we can't push very hard!"

For Hoshino, who says "I was brought up by Nissan", there was never any doubt as he transitioned in his early days, and became an overnight sensation at almost every level.

"I was always very confident," he explains.

"It's not like, 'Oh, I want to win the championship'. It was, 'I am going to win the championship, I am champion already' in my head. I was crazy, but if you're not that way you're not going to achieve what you wish to.

"It's like with my testing with Nissan. Day stops at five o'clock, time to go home, but not me. If it got to that time and I was in second position, I would say, 'No, give me more time, bring me more tyres, let me do long distances'. And I would only go home when I had the fastest lap."

Such determination served Hoshino well. As well as six titles in Japan's premier single-seater class, he wrested two Japanese Sports-Prototype crowns with Nissan in 1991-92, the Japanese Touring Car honours (also with Nissan) in 1990, two Formula Atlantic championships (or Formula Pacific, as it was known in Japan), and five victories in the Fuji Grand Champion series for sports-racers.

If Hoshino was born 10 years later, it's not too difficult to imagine him being Japan's first F1 grand prix winner

He was a front-row starter in the 1982 Macau Grand Prix when it ran for FAtlantic, and a month before that he even took a class win in the Bathurst 1000 with Hasemi in a Nissan Bluebird Turbo.

Regrets? "The only thing is I wanted more races in Europe," he reflects.

"But what I feel most proud of is Nissan did their best to develop to the top from zero, and I'm very proud to have been involved in that development and to have such a wonderful career with Nissan.

"I developed all the cars, experienced all this progress, which is now used in regular cars and applied to the name and fame of Nissan all over the world. Racing is like an experiment, and I was the experiment for the development of cars worldwide."

In a parallel world, one in which Hoshino is born 10 years later, it's not too difficult to imagine him being Japan's first F1 grand prix winner. After all, there are plenty who earned that honour who were beaten by him.