Honda doesn't regret F1 withdrawal
Honda insisted its decision to pull-out of F1 was the right one
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By Matt Fortune. |  |
Friday, 23, Oct 2009 11:43
By Adam Leveridge
Honda has no regrets about its decision to pull-out of formula one last December, despite missing out on Brawn GP's double title success.
The Japanese can manufacturer announced its intention to pull out of the sport and the end of last year when the world financial meltdown meant it could no longer afford to run an F1 programme.
That decision left the Brackley-based outfit in limbo, fighting to survive and to get cars on the grid at the opening round of the season in Australia.
Eventually, Ross Brawn and Nick Fry took the reigns of the team and managed to get to Melbourne after receiving a cash injection from Honda.
Speaking to Autoweek Honda's president and CEO Takanobu Ito said he still has no regrets about withdrawing from the sport, insisting that it was the right thing to do.
"I have no regrets. After our withdrawal, we've seen our team doing extremely well," said Ito.
"The reason why I say this is because of all the efforts we put into the team prior to our withdrawal that led to this result.
"Usually when we decide to withdraw our team from F1 racing, there are fights and anguishes ... fortunately the team has succeeded. It has produced very good results, so people seem to be very happy which is quite unusual.
"Honda is very proud of the fact that we were able to make such a smooth withdrawal based on a very well-thought out plan....
I think we did very well with the withdrawal and after the withdrawal; we managed very quickly to inject all our resources into environmental technology development.
"We are] very proud the management was so speedy in making this change."
Ito said that Takeo Fukui made his decision, not only based on the world financial crisis, but also because Honda's F1 programme wasn't in line with Honda's environmental considerations.
"Just a year ago, Mr. Fakui made the decision to withdraw from F1 racing and I think it was the correct decision," Ito said.
"We do love F1 racing, but even more than that, we had to think about our company; following the global recession our management environment had truly deteriorated, also due to the need to comply with environmental needs, which meant we had to develop new technologies. So this came first.
"I can surely say the few hundreds of people that were working on F1 and the tens of billions of yen used for F1, this has been converted to the development of environmental technologies."