Onyx

Origins

Onyx Grand Prix was a British F1 team founded by Mike Earle and Jo Chamberlain that entered Formula 1 in 1989. Onyx had been a successful Formula 3000 outfit through the late 1980s — winning races and developing drivers — and the F1 step-up was funded by Swiss-based Moneytron sponsorship from financier Jean-Pierre Van Rossem. Operating from Littlehampton on the English south coast, Onyx represented one of several late-1980s F1 entries that briefly thrived on the era's commercial expansion before unraveling under financial and management strain.

Golden Era

Onyx's high-water mark was a sensational 1989 Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril, where Stefan Johansson finished third — Onyx's only podium. The result came through chaotic conditions that produced multiple retirements among the established teams, but Johansson drove a clean, intelligent race in the Onyx ORE-1 to reach the podium. JJ Lehto scored Onyx's only other championship point at the 1990 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola. The team's brief two-season existence produced one podium and a small but real championship presence.

Legendary Cars

The Onyx ORE-1 (1989) was designed by Alan Jenkins (later of Stewart Grand Prix) and was a clean Cosworth DFR-powered chassis with aerodynamic ideas above the team's mid-grid station. The Estoril podium in Johansson's hands gave the chassis a moment of fame that few mid-grid F1 cars achieve. The 1990 ORE-2, built after the team had been sold to Peter Monteverdi, was a less competitive evolution and the team's results regressed accordingly.

Lows and Reinventions

Onyx unraveled in 1990 amid financial chaos. Jean-Pierre Van Rossem was arrested in Belgium for tax evasion and his Moneytron sponsorship money disappeared. The team was sold to Swiss businessman Peter Monteverdi (a former Maserati customer car builder) who renamed the operation Monteverdi Onyx for late 1990, but the rebranded team withdrew before season's end and never returned. Mike Earle continued in motorsport business and sold his other commercial interests but the Onyx F1 chapter was definitively closed.

Modern Era

Onyx is remembered today for the 1989 Portuguese Grand Prix podium — a single chaotic-conditions third place that briefly gave a small midfield team a moment of glory it could neither sustain nor build upon. The team's story captures the late-1980s F1 financial frenzy: the speculative Moneytron sponsor, the arrest of its principal, the asset-sale to a Swiss businessman with no realistic plan, and the rapid disappearance from grids. The ORE-1 chassis appears occasionally at British historic events. Stefan Johansson's Estoril podium remains one of those classic F1 moments — the right driver, the right conditions, the wrong team — that the championship's archive specializes in.