[citation needed] His sponsors, Japan Tobacco, arranged a Formula One seat for Katayama in 1992 with Cabin brand, with the Larrousse team.

The car was unreliable and a distinct midfielder, with team-mate Bertrand Gachot getting the lion's share of the team's meagre resources.

Japan Tobacco managed to arrange a switch to Tyrrell for 1993, but the team were at a low, with the interim 020C essentially three years old, and the new 021 proving uncompetitive.

He impressed with the new 022, with three points-scoring finishes, a number of good qualifying performances, and generally being faster than his more experienced and acclaimed team-mate Mark Blundell.

He was consistently a top-6 runner, but the car proved to be unreliable, leading him to 12 retirements, including the German GP, in which he was running 3rd before his throttle stuck open.

He stayed on with Tyrrell for the next two seasons, but suffered a loss of form, with two 7th places in high-attrition races his best results, thus scoring no points whilst being outpaced by rookie team-mate Mika Salo.

[1] During these years he was highly disadvantaged by the regulation changes which led to higher cockpit sides,[citation needed] a response to the death of Ayrton Senna at the 1994 San Marino GP.

After leaving Tyrrell, his Mild Seven (another brand of Japan Tobacco) backing landed him a seat at Minardi, but they too were at a low ebb, and two 10th places were his best result.

One of his most notable performances post F1 was at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, when during the last hour, as he was lapping traffic and closing up to the leading BMW in his Toyota GT-One, shared with compatriots Keiichi Tsuchiya and Toshio Suzuki, his car suffered a tyre blowout and, while he managed to keep the car on the track, he was forced to slowly make his way around the track to return to the pits for a new set.

On December 1, 2006, it was reported that he had achieved his lifetime ambition of climbing Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world, after an unsuccessful attempt in 2004.