The Weekly Grapevine

Given Friday's tumultuous statement by Honda CEO and president Takeo Fukui, the questions can now be asked: should Honda's Formula One operation have existed in the first place, or did the team effectively exist on a (high drag) wing and a prayer?

Given its roots in a barely disguised campaign to sell cigarettes for British American Tobacco, should the team even have existed in the first place? And, given the outfit's spectacular lack of success, could the withdrawal of the team from motorsport's top four-wheeled category be likened to euthanasia rather than a death blow?

Over the years, various Honda honchos have made the statement that the company 'loves racing', and while it is undeniably true that the company's late founder Sochiro did place motor competition above all else - seemingly above commercial sense and even, it has been whispered, above paternal duties - there is little evidence to suggest that the company actually loved winning Formula One races with its own cars.

Richie Ginther (Honda RA272) won the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City © LAT

Consider: Honda has had four Formula One campaigns - the first lasting for just one-half season from mid-1965 to end 1965; the second running for two years from end-1966; the third for ten years from 1983; and the fourth from 2000 through to last Friday.

Examine them closely and there is a common thread running through all four campaigns, namely that it was only as engine supplier to others that Honda truly became successful. It becomes evident that where it competed with its own cars, it scored but a single fortuitous (rather than fought-for) victory per campaign before withdrawing unexpectedly.

(Richie Ginther tasted victory in Mexico 1965 on account of his Goodyears overcoming terrible track conditions on a day when the opposition was Firestone-shod; John Surtees took the 1967 Italian Grand Prix in the (Lola-designed) 'Hondola' by dint of a masterful last lap move; Jenson Button won a soaked Hungarian Grand Prix in 2006 only after no less than 14 cars ahead of him screwed up in some way or other.)

By contrast, as engine supplier to Williams, Lotus and McLaren during its third campaign, Honda racked up no less than 71 grand prix victories and 11 world championship titles. Spot the difference. Even as engine supplier to Ligier and Jordan under the guise of Mugen-Honda in the mid-to-late 90s it scored more victories than during its three car building campaigns.

But these are statistics plain and simple, and do not take into account Honda's raison d'etre for being in Formula One from 2000 onwards - the very campaign which has now ended in tears for the many talented people in Brackley who bought into the heavily spun Earthdream concept which last week turned into a nightmare.

Having posted zero points in their 1999 debut year, British American Racing, established as a Lucky Strike/555 sales conduit ahead of an anticipated tobacco advertising ban by 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve's manager Craig Pollock, sought and succeeded in persuading Honda to power the car they, BAR, manufactured at a state-of-the-art factory near Silverstone.

That Honda even had engines to supply came about as a result of a sudden withdrawal (that word again...) of its own resurrected car/engine project and subsequent panic at arch-enemy Toyota's pending entry into the sport.

Talk about all the wrong reasons for being in F1: a panicking Japanese motor giant with a history of sudden withdrawals agrees to supply a lack-lustre team established purely to sell nicotine.

John Surtees (Honda RA300) en route to winning the 1967 Italian Grand Prix at Monza © LAT

Whatever, as the baccy ban hit all teams bar Ferrari (go figure), BAT progressively sold the team to Honda, going on to install their own man (Nick Fry), one with a firm handshake and perma-smile but no previous history in grand prix racing, as chief executive officer - note, not team principal.

This appointment came immediately after the team's most successful season (2004), during which the Lucky Strike British American Racing-Honda F1 Team (to give the outfit its full name), headed up by Prodrive's David Richards after Pollock was pushed out, finished (a winless and distant) second to Ferrari in the constructors' championship, mainly on account of Williams, McLaren and Renault failing to get their combined acts together.

Saliently, Richards fought tooth-and-nail to hold on to Jenson Button after his management twice recommended he break contracts. Just as saliently, a year or so later Honda dehired Takuma Sato, then funded the start-up of Super Aguri to give Japan's folk hero a berth. Then, three years later, Super Aguri's funding was abruptly withdrawn (those words), but not before the tiny team regularly embarrassed Big Brother.

Since taking control of the team formerly known as BAR, Honda has gradually regressed down the grid, despite the mother company spending more on its campaign than any of the five other motor manufacturers in the sport spends on their F1 operations - a matter compounded by the inexplicable decision to dedicate the car to ecological messages in lieu of commercial sponsorship programmes.

The whys and wherefores of this decision have been debated at length, with Honda staff and brass vehemently denying that a lack of success in raising funding elsewhere lay at the core of the matter, but it is nevertheless a fact that the team had no experience in sponsorship acquisition, very simply as it inherited the BAT partnership and its associated funding, and switched to Earthdream livery after numerous high-value sponsor pitches (mainly in the Middle East) proved unsuccessful.

The net effect is that for the last two years, the team from Brackley has produced the worst 'bang for bucks' ratio of all teams on the grid despite having the highest operational spend - a situation further compounded by the fact that the team, unlike all others, had no title sponsor or major partners contributing to its budget to offset costs.

It may have been due to a particularly torturous approval system, but it became a standing joke during this time that Honda's post-event media releases were generally the last to hit the media centre, with more than one Japanese journalist questioning whether the team hoped that most scribes would have packed up and headed for home by the time the bad news arrived.

Thus Honda's board saw in excess of $300m buy around 20 minutes of international TV in 2007 ($15m/minute) versus the $2m/minute it costs Toyota for each 60 seconds during the same period. This year's numbers are not expected to improve matters for Honda.

Put differently, each of the 14 championship points scored by Honda this season just past cost around $20m versus Ferrari's price of $1,75m. To add insult to injury, Button scored a meagre three points versus Rubens Barrichello's 11 despite earning around ten times the stipend of the Brazilian, who was reckoned by many within the team to be 'past it', yet also managed to out-qualify the Brit.

Against this background, is it any wonder that the reason given by Fukui for the company's withdrawal - that Honda was reacting rapidly to the credit crunch, rather than pulling the plug due to a lack of results - sounds rather hollow? Nor did Fukui, head of the world's largest manufacturer of engines at 15m units/annum, blame the FIA's plans to introduce specification engines for the withdrawal - despite Fry's constant assertions that the company would consider withdrawing should these become reality.

Keke Rosberg (Williams FW09 Honda) won the 1984 US Grand Prix in Dallas © LAT

Digging deeper unearths more hollowness: Honda would, he said, be concentrating its engineering resources on new technologies such as small, diesel engines and hybrid and hydrogen power plants, and planned to deploy its race engineers in these areas. All good and sound on the surface, except that with F1's engine freeze and standard engine control units most engine boffins have already been deployed elsewhere, while chassis, suspension and drive-train engineers - in Brackley - will be offered redundancy packages.

Aren't hybrids fitted with suspension, transmissions or brakes; don't composites play a part in their construction?

And, what about the MotoGP programme, which employs an estimated 500 people yet has not been canned? Is that not affected by the credit crisis; do two-wheelers not use similar technology to F1 cars? Is there no chance that motorcycles will one day be powered by small diesels or run on hydrogen? Possibly the fact that Honda's MotoGP campaign is successful is the key to its survival?

Then consider that, for better or for worse, Honda - the first motor manufacturer to introduce hybrid production cars despite Toyota's perceived lead in the area - fully embraced KERS, probably more than any other manufacturer with the possible exception of BMW (which is also a leader in hydrogen and emerging technologies), and F1 is but 110 days away from racing with the new-fangled technology whose usage is set to increase in coming seasons.

Finally, consider that F1 stands on the brink of the most swingeing cost cuts exercise imaginable - led by the team's Ross Brawn (a recent appointment), who (ironically) heads up FOTA's technical working group and is charged with advising the teams' collective on precisely that.

Any wonder then, that Honda's stated reasons for abruptly withdrawing from the sport it says it loves, the sport Fukui once said he would spend 'a trillion dollars' pursuing, positively wilt under intense scrutiny?

Would the company have made the same decision had the team's marketing folk managed to acquire sponsorship to offset the horrendous costs of competing at the top level, rather than allow themselves to be led into the comfort of an eco marketing programme by some pop music guru?

Would the company have made the decision had it not been beaten in the championship standings by eight other teams, all of whom spent a whole lot less on their programmes, having managed to persuade partners to share in the funding?

Jenson Button (Honda RA106) wins the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring © LAT

Would the company have made the same decision had it not been so publicly maligned by a pair of drivers earning millions at every turn? Somehow one could not imagine Michael Schumacher behaving thus - and still Fukui made a point of apologising to the only driver still under contract, who then travelled to Brackley to boost the morale of the troops whose handiwork had constantly been criticised.

The credit crunch, it seems, provided a convenient exit for the company at precisely the time when criticism of its programme is at its most vociferous, particularly amongst its shareholders in Japan. Just stop to consider the team's car numbers, and garage positions at its own Suzuka circuit next year. Honda has a history of sudden withdrawal and a history of relative failure when campaigning its own cars (winning just one race each time), so last week's statement was certainly in keeping with its modus operandi.

In the final analysis, Honda (re) entered the sport for all the wrong reasons, then made, or permitted to be made, appointments and decisions which, with very few exceptions, compounded the original error. In short, Honda's fourth campaign is an abject lesson in how a motor company should not go racing. Hopefully the company will one day return to grand prix racing - as engine supplier.

Ed note: Dieter Rencken's Japanese Warriors, written ahead of this season, provides further background information.