http://www.itv-f1.com/Feature.aspx?T...Allen&id=44706
James Allen on Honda's F1 future
Thursday, 04 December 2008 20:36
Honda will announce tomorrow morning that it is withdrawing from Formula 1.
It is putting its team up for sale and will continue to fund the team for three months, but if no buyer is found by March then the team will be closed down.
The team was addressed by team principal Ross Brawn this evening and he explained the situation to the workforce.
As today was a FOTA meeting in Geneva it is likely that the news was broken there and has leaked out from other teams initially.
Honda has its car factories in Japan working part-time shifts, owing to the collapse in the automobile sales market and clearly the management feel that they can no longer justify spending up to £200 million a year on F1, even if cost-cutting measures are in the pipeline.
Too much time has been wasted in agreeing a package of measures as the FIA and Williams management have been warning for months.
The news is a major shock, because Honda is one of the most profitable of the car makers currently engaged in F1.
If they can make this decision, so can the others.
This is a major moment for the sport and I imagine Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley will be ringing around frantically this evening ensuring that the remaining teams are solid.
Toyota are the ones most are nervous about. They may use the withdrawal of their major rival as an excuse to get out, should they feel the conditions demand it.
Mosely is likely to use this difficult situation to reiterate that radical cost-cutting measures need to be taken with immediate effect.
He is entitled to say, "I told you so" and although he'll take no pleasure from it, he will have been proved right.
Honda has a track record of sudden withdrawals, pulling out of Williams in 1987 to switch to McLaren and then withdrawing from F1 altogether in 1992.
Honda took full ownership of the BAR team in 2005 and the highlight of its brief career was Jenson Button's win at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2006.
The Financial Times newspaper recently wrote that the team was the highest spending of the F1 outfits and had got through £147 million in 2007, about £40 million more than McLaren.
They added 100 new staff - taking the total to 667 - and were investing heavily in the Ross Brawn plan for the future.
The news will be a savage blow to Button, who renewed his contract with the team shortly before the Japanese Grand Prix.
With all the top seats filled and on the back of an indifferent season, Button will be feeling nervous about his prospects for 2009.
It is only hearsay at this stage but I understand that it will be confirmed in the next few hours, when Tokyo opens for business.
I understand that the package being put up for sale does not involve the potential new owner running Honda engines but instead involves Ferrari engines, a deal which one imagines Ross Brawn would have put together.
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