Honda F1 in trouble, and withdraw from F1

[xpensive]

I think nobody is safe at these times, they could be all in the same predicaments unless some truly radical, effective and prompt cost-cuttings can be agreed on this Friday.

But I'm afraid that won't be enough, when I feel that over the past 20 years, F1 have gradualy shifted its focus from racing to private jets, beautiful girls, nothing-to-do-with-it celebrites and all kinds of non-racing excesses.

I have a strong suspicion that the razmatazz of the above is what to a certain extent attracted corporate CEO's to foot those outrageous bills.

[WhiteBlue]

Lets have a little confidence that they will get it sorted and that we will have new teams coming into F1. One thing they need to fix is the one make nature of all feeder series. Mike Lawrence at pittpass wrote about it the other day.

It is good to have low cost for drivers but you also need a breeding ground for teams. F2 and GP2 could be the perfect way to have both. GP2 needs to be the stepping stone for F1 in terms of team nurturing.

[autolover]

Pity on that!and now Honda F1 has no news about...maybe Prodrive? I hope have a early reply!

[Metar]

It is good to have low cost for drivers but you also need a breeding ground for teams. F2 and GP2 could be the perfect way to have both. GP2 needs to be the stepping stone for F1 in terms of team nurturing.

Hmm.. Good point. These days, you can't have a Minardi or March step up from the junior series into F1, as these teams don't have to design a thing, and thus have no tunnel, no workforce and no experience..

[WhiteBlue]

If the secondary F1 tunels are made redundant as it looks, GP2 could be looking at bargains. Same goes for a bunch of engineers and test teams. They should do something ASAP.

[Metar]

True, but what will they test? They can't modify the GP2 cars..

[WhiteBlue]

Thats why I say they should do something.

[donskar]

It's shame that men like this run the sport we love:

"Honda will be no great loss," Ecclestone told British newspaper Telegraph on Thursday. "Just look at where they finished in the championship - ninth. They wasted millions and were a bad example to other teams.

"Now they've gone, we've got a chance to bring in some sense to the teams about how much they should spend. I'm keen for the team to be kept in place. We have whittled it down to three serious potential buyers."

[Birel99]

I agree Donskar, For all we know F1 could be on the brink of collapse and all Bernie has to say is that a loss of a major team is "No great loss"! Every team lost is a major deal IMVHO. Yea honda may not be the most efficient but when you have a manufacture spending hundreds of millions and employing countless hundreds of people simply go away, it damn well better be a big loss!

Regards,

[modbaraban]

I agree with donskar. It's clearly the case where you shouldn't ask for whoom the bell tolls, and even if it's not.... BE could at least try to pretend being polite.

[WhiteBlue]

Hm, this is Bernie the cool guy. I agree he is pretty arrogant.

At least the Honda exit has shaken up FiA and FOTA. They both got down to some serious work and did something instead of sitting on their thumbs. For once there will be fundamental action addressing a problem that is with F1 for more than 10 years.

Mr. Eccleston's role in this was not helping with solutions. He is a big part of the problem by taking huge amounts of money out of the sport and replacing it with debt.

Those who work on the solution should get together against this exploiter and use every legal opportunity (and some under the table stuff) to claw some of that money back that he took out of the sport.

[Treead]

Don't think anyone ask this question yet, what's going to happen to Suzuka? With Honda out of the way, will it become all Fuji all the time?

[WhiteBlue]

I understand it will be the other way round. Fuji will go, isn't it?

[Metar]

Fuji is Toyota County, but they're having trouble filling the grandstands (though, can we suspect this was partly down to the atrocious weather in 2007, and the fear of a repeat this year?). Suzuka is Honda's turf, and they just pulled out of F1. Where does that leave us? No Japanese GP soon, as well?

[xpensive]

All those rumours about an imminent buy-out of the Honda F1 team, from either Prodrive or PSA(!), makes me wonder if it is somehow orchestrated just to whip up an interest in the team?
I fail to see any board of directors anywhere endorsing the idea of a commitment to spend 100 MEUR, let alone 300, a year om an F1 team today.