Honda’s involvement in F1 didn’t provide much return from success point anyways …

Its time for Nick to take dig dip into his pockets and come up with the monies, if he is that serious about racing and F1

Although this must bring into question the future of other teams there are differences between Honda and the other teams.

For the past two years because of the Earth Dream concept the team have not had much sponsorship so while the team still seemed to have a top budget from reports more of it had to come from Honda than normal.

Also the fact that for the last two season the have been down at the bottom of the championship would have made it is easier to pull the plug than if they had a been winning races or had a real chance of a championship in the next few years.

Although Car companies may say F1 is about R&D the money spent can more easily be justified as advertising, and if Honda were spending more than others yet still at the back it shouldn’t have surprised me that they reconsidered their future in F1.

Team F1Fanatic!

Nick Fry said in an interview on GMTV this morning that the team have had 3 serious offers from potential buyers in the past 12 hours.

I don’t doubt that there might be people interested, but actually taking the plunge is different. There was “interest” in Aguri, “interest” in STR which has not manifested itself very much so far.

Someone might buy them, but to run as a customer-type team. I think it highly unlikely someone is going to buy them to run as a manufacturer. And I think they might go through a Jordan-Midland-Spyker-Force India like period of a different buyer every season for a bit.

I hope that if Honda dose indeed pull the plug, someone will jump in and operate the team for next season. That being said, I consider it highly unlikley, but will still hope for the best. Firstly, my thoughts are with the staff and employees who will be affected by this decision- best to them if some or all do find themselves out of work because of this.

I believe linking Toyota and Renault to this may be a bit different, as those teams are well-sponsored and Renault in particular have had recent success and have a top driver in their ranks. Still, at times like this it is the bottom line that makes sense, and it would not entirely suprise me to see one of the other manufacturer-based teams pull out.

The Limit- To be honest, I do believe that M-B, BMW, and Ferrari are doing better than the mainstream automakers. While I have no hard numbers to base this on, wealthy people will always want to upgrade and trade in for a new ride, and I would expect that these carmakers are not in as bad of shape as the ones who seel to mainstreamers such as myself.

Chris- Not to nitpick at a time like this, but with Rubens having come in third at Silverstone, woulden’t the medal have been a bronze?

If you do the “melt-down” scenario, to continue the metaphor, it is difficult to set F1 aside from the general oncoming financial malaise.

You lose some of the car companies, some of the foreign tracks, throw in a pile of advertising money; and suddenly everything is in the retrenchment mode, all parties needing to offload anything not essential to rolling something, anything, onto the grid.

Gee….did we just live through the Golden Age, commercially speaking of course, of Formula One?

Nah, not really, I’m just spinning in place……

I’m sure the guys at the top who are financing Honda’s f1 team wouldnt be that excited about donating valuable resources (in the current financial climate) to produce a net result, which based on this season, would have produced one silver medal.

I’m worried that more will follow. How much longer can a customer team like williams be competitve when they are clearly suffering financial problems? Will Torro Rosso last much longer before Red Bull decide that its not financially viable to have two teams competing in f1?

This is a worrying time for f1. Maybe bernie should start prioritising and look more at cost cutting measures and leave things like the points system alone for the time being.