Honda pulls out of Formula One
Eurosport - Fri, 05 Dec 16:57:00 2008
Honda Motor Co has announced that it is pulling out of Formula One motor racing, although next year's Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka circuit will still go ahead as planned.
Amid slumping car sales triggered by the worldwide downturn, Honda are no longer willing to bankroll the Formula One team and its estimated annual budget of $500 million.
Honda Motor Co Chief Executive Takeo Fukui told said a return to the sport could take time, and that there were no plans to continue as an engine supplier.
"This difficult decision was taken recently and was made in light of the quickly deteriorating operating environment facing the global auto industry," Fukui said.
"Honda must protect its core business activities and secure the long term as widespread uncertainties in the economics around the globe continue to mount.
"We will enter into consultation with associates of Honda Racing F1 and its engine supplier Honda Racing Development regarding the future of the two companies. This will include offering the team for sale."
Fukui, who told Reuters this year that he would "spend a trillion yen" if he could to make Honda a Formula One winner, said there would be no speedy return to the sport.
"At this stage we have no plans to return to F1. We have no plans to supply engines to other teams," he said. "We do not want to be half in and half out of the sport."
Honda would in any case have little time to find a buyer with the 2009 season starting in Australia on March 29.
"We would love to be able to continue in Formula One but we're simply not able to in the current financial climate," Fukui said.
"At testing in Barcelona last month we were still positive about racing in F1 next season.
"But we have to use our resources sensibly. As far as potential buyers go, our criterion would be that they continue to employ the hundreds of engineers who work for the Honda team."
Honda, like all of its rivals suffering from a sharp fall in global car sales, saw its sales in the United States, its biggest market, slump 32 percent last month.
"Pulling out of F1 will have a big impact in terms of cutting overall costs," said Fukui. "The most important thing for Honda is to see where we are in the next three to five years."
With Formula One's power-brokers desperately seeking cost-cutting measures to ensure its own survival, Honda's departure will have serious implications for the glamour sport.
It also leaves Britain's Jenson Button without a drive for 2009, although some teams have yet to confirm their lineups.
Brazilian Bruno Senna, the 25-year-old nephew of the late triple world champion Ayrton, had also been tipped to take the place of compatriot Rubens Barrichello at Honda next season.
Honda's exit leaves the multi-billion dollar sport facing a depleted grid of 18 cars if no buyer can be found in the extremely tight time-frame available.
It will also prompt fears that other major manufacturers, with their factory production suspended and thousands of staff laid off, could follow Honda's example.
Honda and Toyota Motor Corp have been the big spenders in Formula One in recent years.
Ross Brawn, the former Ferrari technical director who won multiple world championships with Michael Schumacher, was hired to run the Honda team at the end of last year.
Despite its huge resources, Honda had a dismal 2008 season and was pinning its hopes on next year's new rules levelling the playing field.
Button, a winner for Honda in Hungary in 2006, scored just three points and Barrichello took 11. The team finished ninth overall.
Honda's best finish in the constructors' championship was fourth, in 1967 and 2006, although they powered McLaren and Williams to a string of titles in the 1980s and 1990s.
The last team to leave Formula One was Honda-backed Super Aguri, the tail-enders who folded for financial reasons in April.
The sport's governing body said on Friday that Cosworth would provide Formula One teams with a low-cost engine option from 2010.
FIA president Max Mosley said the body was in exclusive negotiations with Cosworth, Xtrac and Ricardo Transmissions (XR) to provide a complete powertrain (engine and gearbox).
"We can get the cost down from the current £200 million ($293.4 million) plus [per team] down to about £30 million at which point the income from television and the income from sponsors covers it and you don't need these huge subsidies from the car industry," Mosley said.
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Comment 179 - 198 of 218
Thanks Ginge for alerting people to my demonic possesion by an idiot.
Touron has been posting as me, I should really change my profile name to Touron and start talking sense and acknowledging the truths that we all know, such as:
Touron is an idiot.
Touron has no friends.
Hamilton won fairly.
.
That might be fun.
Bill Mac: My record so far is 36 thumbs up with 2 thumbs down for the same comment. Go me!!!!
Hullo Bill, Ginger and Co (sounds like Biggles!).
I was just looking at the article about Jensen and Honda and was horrified to see that between 25-33% of the attached posts are from the prat ! That's actual posts. If you take the word count a good 50% must be prat-babble and that's not including the other prats that pop up now and then.
My point is that every effort to get a 2nd reply to ronthedog on site has been rejected, while the prat continues to occupy so much space!
It's time for the revolution!
you should be ashamed, I think justifiable punishment would be having to spend 30 minutes supporting mouronroute's "facts".
I deal with alot of District Nurses, Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists. Given these people are employed and trained to benefit our health, you'd be surprised at the number that can't tell the difference between a walking frame and a crutch, can't count properly and think you can 'galvanise' wood.
Nope, worse than that, work in conjuction with the Health Service
I assume you must teach then Ginge.
Bill Mac: Spend a day doing my job and you'll quickly realise that there are people out there who really are that stupid, so I wouldn't be surprised if he is as well.
Hi Ginge, poor old mouron impersonating the Scottish and expecting to get away with it. Dear-oh-dear.
There is a reason why "it appears to have been written by an idiot or a child" and that's because it was.
I simply cannot understand why some of these things are important to him. what does it matter who owns Aston Martin down to the last share? Or where a roundabout is?
I do think that we might have someone winding us up, nobody is that stupid surely.
Pour old Honda hey
I see mouronroute had changed his name to ScottishC. Pay attention to this people and don't confuse him with Scottish C.
Scottish C's postings will show a decent level of education, with understanding or the english language and reasoned argument.
Mouronroute's postings as ScotishC will appear to have been written by an idiot or a child and more often than not factually inaccurate and full of boastings about who he knows.
hello my little f1 bum chums it marion here from peru.
mr hamiltons son say he stay with mclaren men for life. that nice for him but what do mclaren men say? you see mclaren is now german owned. the parent company is the mercedes benz which is the german. the engine is the german engine. everything about the team is the german. mr hamiltons son now the swiss gentleman he eat much cheese and sings in the morning at mountains. mr hamiltons father is also now the swiss man. in fact there nothing british about this team at all. even the man who tidy up the garage after the race has moved to switzerland with his mother. switzerland is owned by the german. my friends the whole team is GERMAN - and guess what - so is mr glock. now you see why the time stand still for mr glock on the last lap. like he in the time warp. not even the people abducted by the alien lose the amount of time he lost on that last lap. IT IS A DISGRACE!!!
mclaren are cheats along with hamilton No 1 will ever take them too seriosly, they tarnish the name of F1 un repairable now my hoes THE NAME OF F1 TOO TARNISHED it is a joke...
Am I the only USA poster on this site?
Must be, since there are no replies...
PC Plod
I also note that this appears to be a European centric site which leaves us US and Canadian posters posting into thin air...
But that is OK, enjoy what is left of F1 while you can.
PC Plod
And we are surprised that a major team has pulled out of the insatiable greed of the owners and operaters of Formula 1?
Er, not really, what is surprising is that it took so long and that to this point, only one team has bailed out.
Message to Bernie: when you shut down the USA and Canada in F1 terms, you also shut down the USA and Canada in terms of Monday morning car sales, and in today's tight market, shutting down the major showcase in North America was probably not wise.
But that's what you did Bernie, and now, you will reap the rewards of the damage that you caused. I'm a Canadian who spends 90% of my life in the USA and I have to tell you that these days, F1 is not even on the USA radar screen. As I write this from Laurel, Maryland, just a few miles north of Washington DC, I can tell you that F1 news does not even make the sports page.
A once global enterprise that today, does not even make it to the sports pages of the
Washington Post or the Baltimore Sun.
Way to go Bernie, perhaps the Gulf Times will report in your favour but here in the USA, the press simply ignores F1 news because nobody cares any more.
And you caused that to happen Bernie, because of your greed, and, because you faied to recognise that we, here in the USA, have more attractive ways to spend our money.
So now that F1 is moving to the far east, and is losing the tracks for which F1 became interesting, I am forced to conclude that the F1 that I admired over the years is no more and as it further coincides with camel racing, I will not be watching.
Goodbye F1, and, long live the new F1 that will surely be born from the ashes of the old F1 that Bernie destroyed with such casual contempt. PC Plod
To: ronthedog
What I object to most is the language you use and your complete deformation of the characters of Ron Dennis, the Maclaren staff and the Hamiltons. It is beyond me to understand how any intelligent person can actually think like that. You might have your few on events, but to sink to that level of personal abuse is uncalled for.
As for MY eyes, they are quite unblinkered thank you.
That's what he said!
GINGER GITT tell us new news, not news from 2007, tell us the news from june 2008. ford do not own anything in aston martin FACT
BILL MAC, as you was told yesterday by the man in know, you will never know nothing, you can never and will not know the truth that is broadcast.
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