The biggest bargain in F1 history has expensive strings attached

You can buy Honda for as little as £1. But there is a catch…

It’s a little ironic that anyone can buy Honda, but no one can afford to run it. Even a very rich backer - another major car manufacturer, say - would not want to sink £50m into running costs for next season, nor take on a company with some 700 highly skilled staff; not in the current economic climate. Of course, a new buyer could decide to slash its new workforce and run a skeleton operation.

Honda boss Nick Fry claims that he has been contacted by three “serious” buyers, but we remain scpetical.

Who are these mystery buyers?

Another team could follow Honda out the door

We’re all still recovering here in the Gridcrasher garage. Honda’s decision to quit the sport left all fans of the sport reeling - and there could be another victim of the global economic downturn.

Indeed, Max Mosley says he suspects another team will drop out before the start of the 2009 season, while Williams’ chief executive Adam Parr told The Times that he expects just eight teams to line up on the Melbourne grid.

Toyota seemed to be the most likely manufacturer to follow Honda, amid a dramatic slump in car sales, especially in the US. But Toyota has confirmed it will compete next season - Honda’s exit means one less rival for them, after all.

If Toyota have decided to tough it out, Red Bull appear less committed. In a statement the team said it was “not surprised” by Honda’s decision to pack up and sell out.

“Numerous other race teams are having similar thoughts,” the Austrian group told AFP.

“The main issue now is whether the reductions in costs all of us must make will come quickly enough to guarantee a sufficient number of teams carrying on.”

Max Mosley outlines single engine supplier option for 2010 season

F1 teams have less than a week to decide whether or not to accept Max Mosley’s option to use Cosworth engines from 2010.

On behalf of the FIA, Herr von Spanky wrote a letter to all of the F1 team principals, advising them of his intention for all teams to use a Cosworth power train. The cost of the package is £1.68m up-front and then £5.49m per season over three years. The price is based on at least four teams taking up the offer.

Teams not wanting to use the standard engine (ie. the likes of Ferrari and McLaren) have “the right to build an engine themselves”, or use a de-tuned version of their current V8s - but they must use a standard transmission supplied by Ricardo Transmissions.

The teams have until December 11 to reply.

Read Max’s letter in full below:

F1 rocked by global recession

“Byeeeeee!”

Holy KERS, Batman! Who saw this coming? Not us, or anyone else judging by the shocked reaction in the media. Max Mosley feared that something like this might happen, but most of us believed - naively, maybe - that F1 could continue to exist in its current state, albeit with a few cost cuts here and there.

Yesterday we told you that Honda had scrapped its annual media lunch. Who knew that the manufacturer had secretly decided to scrap rather more than a seven-course Christmas meal.

Honda’s Nick Fry claims three parties have already been in touch about buying out Honda, and there is every chance the team will run in some form next season, albeit on a greatly reduced budget - but hundreds of staff at Honda’s Brackley HQ will still lose their jobs. And if a giant like Honda can’t survive, you have to wonder if Toyota - Honda’s direct rival in F1 and in the production market - will also pull the plug, perhaps remaining in F1 only as an engine supplier.

So, dark days for F1. And with car sales plummeting around the world, the sport is more vulnerable than at any time in its history.

More on the F1 crisis throughout the day.

Read Honda’s full statement below:

Former world champ slams FIA

Jody Scheckter has criticised Herr Max von Spanky and the FIA for “destroying” F1, claiming they have turned it into “a whole big dictatorship”. In an interview with The Independent, Scheckter went on a massive anti-Max rant:

“I don’t like the way Formula 1 has gone… If you don’t support it, you find yourself on the outside. It needs a radical overhaul of its structure. I don’t like what is happening within the Formula 1 spectacle; it is disgraceful.

“Mosley is the problem. What people do in their private lives is their business, but not when you have a background like his. Once you get exposed like that, whether it’s right or wrong, there is no industry I know of where you would survive.”

Don’t hold back, J-Sheck. And don’t expect a Christmas card from Max any time this century.

Scheckter hard fact! Jody now runs an organic farm in Hampshire. True story.

FIA’s plan for single engine supplier looks doomed

Ferrari have threatened to quit F1 if Max Mosley’s plans to introduce a standard engine for all teams get the green light.

“The use of same engines would deprive F1 of its competition and technological development,” Ferrari said in an official statement. “The board reserves the right to consider, together with our partners, our presence in this discipline.”

Surprise, surprise. It was only a matter of time before Ferrari showed its hand. Toyota had previously made a similar threat, and as much as the prospect of saving millions is a factor, the big F1 teams just don’t want a homogenised engine - imagine a Honda engine in a Ferrari, or a Toyota engine in a McLaren? It’s never going to happen, and we said as much a couple of weeks ago.

FIA boss: still got his spank on

Herr Max von Mosley has admitted that the “spanking hooker orgy scandal” - as we like to call it - has not persuaded him to change his sexual habits. Asked by The Guardian if the scandal will make him shun the dungeony world of S&M, Von Spanky said: “You will never completely lose interest in that sort of thing. You just don’t, to be very honest.”

He also denied, not for the first time, that there was any Nazi element to the sexy party: “The Nazi element - that to me was barking mad. There was never a hint of such a thing.”

Keep on spanking Max - or being spanked, which you seem to prefer. Whatever you choose to do is strictly your own business - and that of the tabloid reporter hidden in your wardrobe.

[The Guardian]

Von Spanky: F1 must slash costs or teams will quit

Will Formula 1, a sport which burns money as if there was no tomorrow, survive the current global financial crisis unscathed? Not unless there are radical cost-cutting measures implemented by 2010, according to FIA boss Max Mosley.

In an interview with the Beeb, Mosley claimed that in its current form, F1 is “unsustainable”. He also predicted that several teams could quit the sport, due to prohibitive running costs:

“At the moment we’ve got 20 cars. If we lost two teams, we’d have 16. (If we lost) three teams (we’d have) 14. It then would cease to be a credible grid.”