Why is Honda out of the F1 race?

In the past, we have seen Honda in the F1 circuits. I think Toyota is the only Japanese car maker involved with F1 now.

Honda has been in F1 for many years, first as engine supplier only, and lately as a whole team.

In the last few years the Honda F1 team did not achieve any good results. They were the among the worst teams in F1 despite huge investments and a high number of personnel.

During last fall, due to the worldwide economic crisis, Honda's board of directors made the decision that the amount of money needed to run a F1 team was not justified by the economy, and they decided to close the doors.

Their team manager, Ross Brawn, tried to salvage the team because he knew that the car they were developing, in which Honda invested huge amount of money to create was going to be a good car. So, with the provision that he would keep the employees and the activity going, Ross Brawn bought the Honda team for just 1 British Pound! He got special treatment from the F1 federation, was able to replace the Honda engine with Mercedes Benz engine, and paired with the sponsorship of Virgin magnate, Richard Branson.

And guess what? The team changed its name from Honda to Brawn GP, and it's the best team in F1 right now, with the best and fastest car. They will probably win this year's world championship. What a story!

Yes, Toyota is the only Japanese manufacturer present in F1 today.

They dropped out because they weren't getting anywhere with their F1 ambitions, and with the economy as it is now they decided to pull out.

I do believe that Honda were too quick to buy the team entirely from British American Racing (BAR) and should have slowly increased their share and authority rather than throwing themselves in at the deep end.

From what I heard, Brawn bought the team for £1, and was given £70 million to run it.

Although people say that Honda will be regretting their decision to pull out, I don't think that things would be going as smoothly as they are if they still owned the team.

Their poor performace in the past few years didn't justify the huge costs (honda had the biggest budget in F1) associated with running an F1 team. The financial crisis last year meant that the corporation had to pull out of F1 to cut costs since they were projecting a huge loss overall for this year.

Honda sold the whole F1 outfit to Ross Brawn.

Honda was bought by brawn earlier on in the year and thus is now know as Brawn GP. If i'm right is was bought under the condition that they were not allowed to let down any staff and that they must stay in Formula 1 till the end of the 2010 season.

I'm not 100% sure that was the case but it's something along those lines

Carpediem602004 got it all right except I read that Brawn didn't pay 1 english pound, but he bought the team through buying all shares in Honda for only a pound per share instead of the regular share price.
I'm not 100% sure but thats what can recall

They couldnt afford to run anymore so some Japanese company supported ross Brawn to buy the team himself although honda did develop the car, bet they are regreting that now lol

Honda didn't go away they were bought by Ross Brawn