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...
The Japanese firm recently cut its road car production in both Japan and Europe, including a 50-day shutdown at its Swindon plant early next year, and its US sales last month fell 32%...
Speculation in recent days suggested it was now turning its cost-cutting attention to its F1 project, although a complete exit from the sport was not an anticipated move...
The Financial Times newspaper recently wrote that [Honda] was the highest spending of the F1 outfits and had got through ?147 million in 2007, about ?40 million more than McLaren...
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...
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