What Honda's latest blow means for its F1 future

After weeks of speculation, it was announced on Thursday afternoon that a deal for Honda to supply Sauber with engines for the 2018 Formula 1 season had been cancelled.

It comes at a time when Honda's relationship with works partner McLaren is on the rocks. Should McLaren split with it, Honda would be left with no teams for next season and facing a bleak F1 future.

If it leaves F1 at the end of this year, the statistics from its fourth era in the field will likely make for grim reading. Zero wins. Zero poles. Zero podiums. Never higher than sixth in the constructors' championship. Poor performance and unreliability have plagued Honda for two-and-a-half seasons.

The first year back in 2015 was painful. The second year brought hope. But a change in concept last winter, in the belief that such a change was required to make a big step, has sent the alliance backwards. McLaren lost patience and broke ranks, launching a scathing attack on Honda in the build-up to the Canadian Grand Prix. It was brutal.

Defeat hurts and it's even tougher to take when the other half of your partnership turns on you.

One option would be to cut and run. Honda has left F1 before, three times in fact, but on each occasion it did so having reached the top step of the podium at least once.

But fourth time round, life has been more challenging. And with the Sauber deal falling through, asking Honda if it remains committed to F1 is a legitimate question.

"Yes and everybody on the board of Honda agrees," replies Masashi Yamamoto, general manager of Honda motorsport, when that question is put to him during an extensive and rare interview with Autosport.

"Honda entered F1 to win. That commitment hasn't changed. We are struggling now but this is happening because we have changed the concept of the power unit.

"The board understands the reasoning behind the decision to change. We believe we are going in the right direction now and we believe we can improve and win. The board members and I believe this is a long-term project. We are going to continue.

"It is important to tackle difficulties head on and work to overcome them - this is and has always been Honda's way of thinking. We knew returning to F1 would be challenging, but this is one of the reasons why we came back."

Yamamoto, who attends around 12 grands prix a season, is well-placed to comment. He is responsible for Honda's motorsport division. He controls the budget. It is his job to convince the board that F1 is worth the hundreds of millions of pounds it has already invested and plans to continue to invest each year.

Despite the poor return so far, the board voted in support of Honda retaining its long-term commitment to F1. But why is Honda stubbornly refusing to give up?

Honda has what it calls "racing spirit". It must compete and it must win. It might be hard and it might take some time but there is no other option. History has proved that.

In January 1964, shortly after it had first begun manufacturing cars, Honda announced its intention to enter F1 for the first time. Within seven months it was on the grid with its own works outfit.

Just over a year later, then-chief engineer of Honda Yoshio Nakamura sent a telegram to Honda HQ. It read: "We came, we saw, we conquered". Honda had secured its first F1 victory, at the 1965 season-ending Mexican Grand Prix.

It left in 1968, ending a five-year stint in F1 with two wins under its belt, citing a desire to focus its full automotive efforts on meeting legislative emissions requirements in the US - but it vowed to return.

It did so in 1983, this time as an engine supplier, and went on to win its first constructors' championship with Williams in '86 and both titles the following year. A season later, it was dominant with McLaren as it won 15 out of 16 races.

Honda left in 1992, stating it had achieved its objectives and wanting to stabilise the core of the business consumer products, but back in came in 2000, toying with an in-house factory team before jointly developing a chassis with BAR and supplying the engine.

Second in the constructors' championship followed in 2004 before a first works entry in 38 years in '06. That year, it took pole in Australia and then victory - its 72nd and last to date - with Jenson Button in Hungary. Two years later, it announced it was off again, this time because of the worldwide recession (and after two abysmal seasons).

The following year, a chassis that it had been developing - albeit with a Mercedes engine plugged in - won the championship under the Brawn GP banner.

We will never know if Honda would have achieved the same feat with its own works outfit but it gives a glimmer of what might have been. Success in each of the eras helps Honda and its staff believe that it can win again.

"If we stayed in F1 for one more year, we think we could have had success," says Yamamoto of the last Honda programme. "We had a good package but we had difficulties and we had to quit because of the economic situation. It appeared that we had built a good car and had turned it around but left before we could reap the rewards.

"Regarding the current situation, we are having challenging time but the racing spirit inside Honda remains. We don't like to get beaten."

Honda's belief in its staff extends to its management and its F1 project boss Yusuke Hasegawa, whose position has come under increasing pressure this season in light of the failures and quality of performance.

"The Honda board believes Hasegawa-San is the right person to lead this project," says Yamamoto. "We don't have any intention to change his position."

Autosport has learned Honda president Takahiro Hachigo called Hasegawa in the wake of the criticism and assured him that he retained the full support of the board. While McLaren is frustrated with the situation, it appears there is no desire from Honda's side for Hasegawa to leave his position.

McLaren has spoken of having alternative plans in mind for 2018 if Honda's struggles continue but Yamamoto believes its partner still hopes to make the relationship work.

"Right now, we believe we are working in the same direction as McLaren," he says. "We feel McLaren is still committed to making this project work. It's not that we can't provide a good power unit, it's that we can't reach the expectations that were originally set for the partnership yet."

The lack of results and frequency of failures does not reflect positively on the company. But when asked if Honda was concerned its brand was being damaged by poor form, Yamamoto says: "We are not doing only F1. We're also doing MotoGP, where we're on top of the [riders'] points standings at the moment [with Marc Marquez].

"Although we are having some negative results in Formula 1, we don't think it's critical. The association of F1 is positive for the brand. We will keep working. We want to stay."

Honda's level of investment - both in terms of finances and resource - backs that claim.

"We can't give you actual numbers, but we have three times as many people now in Sakura compared to the start of the project," adds Yamamoto. "Milton Keynes is also future-proofed. We moved into new facilities, which can house a second team, last year.

"As part of our long-term recruitment, we're continuing to invest in Sakura, hiring new people and drafting in people from other departments, including from mass production.

"We know as a company how much we've invested into this era of Formula 1. We can see our investment in our members of staff and facilities we have grown and developed as well.

"We are having huge investment in our facilities and in people as well. Once it comes altogether, it's going to work. That's our belief."

There have been suggestions Honda could receive consultancy assistance from a rival manufacturer to solve its problems with its F1 programme. It does work with consultants, though it does not divulge who those companies are, but Yamamoto insists Honda is not currently working with any of its opposition. Nevertheless, he adds that Honda is "not against it in the future if the opportunity arose and it was advantageous for both the parties involved".

Honda's priority is to stay with McLaren as a works outfit in F1 but it is keen to have a customer supply as the extra data would prove useful. Sauber would have fulfilled that purpose had the deal not collapsed.

It was Yamamoto who was responsible for putting the deal together with then team boss Monisha Kaltenborn. Sauber made the request to Honda and after lengthy discussions that began last year, Honda agreed and an announcement was made in April.

"Honda wants to make F1 popular in Japan once again," says Yamamoto. "That is one of the reasons why Honda returned to F1. To do that, we think we need to have Japanese drivers in F1 and with that in mind, we felt Sauber was a good option for us.

"The team ran Kamui Kobayashi, who was on the podium in Suzuka, and have demonstrated that it can have good relationships with Japanese drivers."

Honda-backed drivers Nobuharu Matsushita, Nirei Fukuzumi and Tadasuke Makino are currently racing in Formula 2, GP3 and the Formula 3 European Championship respectively. F1 would be the next step, though the trio all require superlicences before they could be in the position to graduate. Sauber seemingly offered an opportunity to make that reality.

But Kaltenborn's departure in June threw a spanner in the works. It has since emerged Kaltenborn's view of the arrangement, and the elements of the deal she had agreed to in principle, differed from the new Sauber management's view.

With some of those elements, such as a path for working with Japanese drivers, still requiring rubberstamping, the deal was put in doubt. When the two sides met, it became clear they no longer saw eye-to-eye, so it was agreed that the deal should be cancelled.

"We were working in the same direction for next year," says Yamamoto. "However, some of the details had not been decided, such as running a Japanese driver or other activities, for example they have some facilities, which we could use for other categories. When the deal was agreed with Monisha, the idea of collaboration for other categories was OK, but they have changed their attitude [following Kaltenborn's departure]."

The search to find an alternative customer supply is on but Honda faces a race against time to do so in time for next year.

"We are talking to teams - other than works outfits like Ferrari and Mercedes - to see if there is an opportunity to do a customer supply deal," says Yamamoto.

"Meeting the schedule to achieve this for next year will be tough, but we still try to look for the opportunity to do so in 2018. If we don't have a customer team, we want to continue with McLaren and then take on a customer team in addition for 2019."

These are challenging times for Honda. But despite the knocks it has suffered since returning, it appears the company and its staff have a stomach for the fight.