The shock news I came into this morning (it was last night's story actually, but I was already in bed) was that Formula 1 had fallen victim to the global recession.

It was a sport that seemed untouchable. Teams employ hundreds of people and spend hundreds of millions of pounds trying to make a car go faster. However, it suffered a massive reality check - Honda's Formula 1 team announced that the current global financial situation has led to them having to sell or wind up their team.

Their results in this 2008 may have made the decision a bit easier. Honda were seen as one of the more financially stable teams in the paddock but their rate of return has not been spectacular - they picked up only 14 points this year after spending almost half a billion dollars on developing two cars, testing them, and employing two famous drivers (Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello ).

Out of the 9 teams that scored any points this year, they came 9th. They are hardly Driving Miss Daisy but they are not posing a major championship challenge.

We got the views of all the main people involved in this story this morning on Breakfast - Formula 1 Boss Bernie Eccelstone, FIA president Max Mosley but first the Chief Executive of Honda's Formula 1 Team Nick Fry who told us that being brought out was still an option.

The president of of the FIA Max Mosley was mocked by some teams for coming up with the idea of standardised engines and Renault driver Fernando Alonso even suggested that he could quit Formula 1 if this idea came to fruition. He may not need to quit, he may not have a car to drive.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• NowPublic |
• Reddit
• - What's this?