Honda buys out BAT

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haswell00
Grand-Prix.com
Japanese car manufacturer Honda has bought out British American Tobacco and will be running a wholly-owned team in F1 next year. The team has yet to be named. The move is not unexpected, although it is rather quicker than had been planned as BAT was keen to get out of F1 after the banning of tobacco advertising in Europe.

"We began negotiations in the summer to increase our share from 45% to full acquisition," said Hiroshi Oshima, the company's chief operating officer. "We want to race as Honda and we want to challenge for the World Championship. We want to take the team in a better direction."

The team has not been successful this year despite the speed of the cars on occasion.

It is not yet clear who will be running the team and there are suggestions from Japan that Takuma Sato will probably be involved, which will create a difficult situation as both Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button have been signed to the team on long-term contracts.
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Wow. This was much sooner than I had expected. Well this should be good for the team, no more issues between BAR and Honda.

This brings the count up to four new teams next year: BMW, Midland, Red Bull Rookie and now Honda. :scared:

Blake
 
Grand-Prix.com
More details are emerging of Honda's plans in F1 and we hear from Japan that there will be a second team next year, using V8 engines. This is expected to be a new team but there are no further details at the moment of who this may involve. The only obvious candidate is the Japanese group that was discussing a deal with McLaren. It is perhaps possible that the team would acquire the old McLaren factory in Woking and work from there but getting things in place would be a rush, given that there is a limited time available to design and build a car.

Takuma Sato will be the driver of the secondary Honda team, which suggests that there is a strong Japanese involvement in the project and that has led to speculation that it could be the Dome comapny, which has been working closely with Honda for years.
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More …

I really think it is too late for a new team for next year, and maybe the rumours of a few weeks ago will come to fruition: Red Bull Rookie being supplied engines by Honda.

Blake
 
things are looking great for me. i'm happy. i told you it might be minardi using the engines... i doubt it now though. i also doubt if it is dome that they could get into it next year so quick (and be any good.) i think they could do it in 2007 though.

damn i feel good...

*is giddy* :D

:bowdown: HONDA :bowdown:
 
I suppose it didn't matter if BAT were to leave at a later date. They still owned 55% of the company. It's not as if they would have simply given their stake hold over to Honda. Honda figured they might as well just buy them out now and have full control in preparation for next year. Instead of doing another season as BAR Honda.
Single entities running 2 teams seems a little dodgy to me, though. The FIA will have to mandate some kind of restriction that prevents the 2 teams from sharing data. There's no reason why the A team wouldn't data from B team if they can. Add to that 2 Friday drivers. That's 6 cars per Friday gathering data.
 
Personally I dont think thi swill be good for the team NEXT year, maybe after that, but i expect to see them stumble, hardcore. I'll probably be totally wrong, and if they prove me wrong, good on em. But really I jsut think they wont be able to jsut come right in, and create a good package, sure they will retain data from previous years, but that wont be enough, I would think many of the same people will be the ones having a bearing on the final package, the onyl people that change really will be the bosses, what are they gonna do? Produce some revolutionary technique from thier ass to increase downforce and decrease drag relatively to what we have now? I dont think so. Just look at the money Toyota have put into their factory team, its taken them years to get competitive, and even now its only slim chance of podium competitive, when one or two of the other teams that are about their level of performance have a bad weekend. I cant see Honda doing much better than that, and one would assume they wouldnt have anywhere near the resources of Toyota.
 
It didn’t take years for Toyota to become competitive … it took Mike Gascoyne.

And personally I don't think Honda will do too badly next year. They’ll have many of the same people who are getting this years car back up to speed.

I doubt they’ll be winning a championship, but I don't think they'll be in the bottom 6 – though the top 5 teams should be fairly competitive next year (maybe even top 6 if Williams get their act together).

Blake
 
the other team will just be using honda engines right? it will be a different car wont it?

honda has ALWAYS been better then toyota. to put it simply, toyota sucks. they throw money at things and they still dont win like they should. honda didnt put as much money in last year and did much better and this year imo they would be doing better still if it wasnt for bad luck.

honda has over 50 gp wins. how many does toyota have?

everything is looking great for honda for next year. to decent drivers and a car that should be competitve givin all the testing they have done this year to make it reliable.
 
Honda hasn’t produced an entire car since the 60s. You seem to be getting Honda the team mixed up with Honda the engine manufacturor.

Also that is a very biased statement. Toyota is currently comming 4th in the constructors standings. BAR is comming … oh yeah 6th, with less than half of Toyotas total points.

You should remember that in F1, money isn’t everything. It's the people, it’s the drivers, it’s the attitude. Renault had only the 6th highest budget in 2004, and it’s not much different this year, but look at the results they’re producing.

And yes, Honda will only be supplying engines if it supplies anything.

Blake
 
Do you think they will stay based in brackley?? They best do because it brings this place more money, but i don't see it..

Well there goes a story, BAR we knew so well...


R.I.P BAR
 
Hell Patrol
Instead of buying out BAR, Why NOT start a new Honda team saperate from BAR?
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Because BAR already have a factory and all that, plus a staff and organization. Starting a F1 team from scratch would take years. This new mystery team that is linked to Honda must have been in planning for at least 2 or 3 years.

Maybe now that BAR is out of the picture Honda can pull it's thumb out of it's butt and actually win a race.

I still think they need David Richards back...biggest mistake the team ever made, period...well other than forming for JV.
 
Nice we have mcmercedes vs bmw now and toyota vs honda. All they need to do now is rebadge that renault to what it is really which is a nissan car as its using nissan tech.
 
Young_Warrior
Nice we have mcmercedes vs bmw now and toyota vs honda. All they need to do now is rebadge that renault to what it is really which is a nissan car as its using nissan tech.
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Won't ever happen...though I would prefer to see Nissan F1 over Renault....
 
Young_Warrior
Nice we have mcmercedes vs bmw now and toyota vs honda. All they need to do now is rebadge that renault to what it is really which is a nissan car as its using nissan tech.
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Of course we all know that the R25 chassis is just a cleverly disguised variation of the 350Z/G35 chassis, and the RS25 engine is just a rebadged version of the 19,000 rpm V10 that Nissan makes for the.....wait a minute....

All kidding aside, Renault will never take the Nissan name, as it would piss off the 50 million Frenchmen who shovel money into Bernie's pocket. He won't let that little money stream dry up :)
 
kylehnat
Of course we all know that the R25 chassis is just a cleverly disguised variation of the 350Z/G35 chassis, and the RS25 engine is just a rebadged version of the 19,000 rpm V10 that Nissan makes for the.....wait a minute....

All kidding aside, Renault will never take the Nissan name, as it would piss off the 50 million Frenchmen who shovel money into Bernie's pocket. He won't let that little money stream dry up :)
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Dude the R25 is a Skyline with an extra special body kit. You didn't know that?
 
I doubt the Honda team will be much of a threat to the championship next year. I'm betting on another Renault vs. McLaren battle, maybe with Ferrari in the mix if they get their act together for next season (And possibly even Toyota). But for 2007, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they are a serious championship threat (along with BMW, and possibly even Red Bull's main team). It looks like F1 is really shaping up nicely for the forseeable future.

Also seeing what materializes from this strange second team will be interesting too.
 
Ev0
I doubt the Honda team will be much of a threat to the championship next year. I'm betting on another Renault vs. McLaren battle, maybe with Ferrari in the mix if they get their act together for next season (And possibly even Toyota). But for 2007, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they are a serious championship threat (along with BMW, and possibly even Red Bull's main team). It looks like F1 is really shaping up nicely for the forseeable future.

Also seeing what materializes from this strange second team will be interesting too.
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I agree with you other than the dates. I don't expect BMW/Honda to be a threat until at least 2009 or 2010. Honda before BMW.
 
It would be interesting to have Dome in F1. They have similar facilities to those at BAR. I think this is the most likely identity of the ‘mystery team’: “From 1986 we have set our goal to enter the F1 Grand Prix and we have shaped our activities around formula cars,” the team says. “We have developed an F1 car of our own and we are currently accumulating know-how and building up our organisation to make it possible for us to enter.”

As for them entering next year, well it would be difficult … we’ll see what happens.

Blake
 
i know honda hasnt built the car for a long time but they still have the know how and the engines are great. i think they stand a great chance.

i saw toyota sucks just because i dont like them. not the f1 team alone, toyota as a company i dont like.
 

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