David Richards To Buy Honda Team?

And in today's episode of "As The Camshaft turns" … OK, as you know, Honda bailed from F1 racing with about 17 hours notice. 'Too expensive' they cried. 'World economic downturn' they moaned. Although actually it is looking more and more that getting their rear wings handed to them by the likes of Toro Rosso and Toyota had more to do with it than just plain money. Shoot, even the good crew over at Axis of Oversteer is saying that 'BMW calls Honda girly men for quitting Formula 1′. As they were leaving, Honda did say that if they could find a buyer, they'd be more than willing to sell the team and it's assets (you know, little trinkets like rolling road wind tunnels and server farms you'd ordinarily find in places like Fort Mead) if anyone was interested. 'F1 team for sale?!?!' said Dave Richards. There's more, after the jump. Richards is the guy behind ProDrive, the British outfit that runs Subaru's WRC team (and quite well thank you) and also runs Aston Martin's Le Mans efforts (and quite well thank you). Richards also really, really wanted to run his own F1 team. He was in it to the point of having an agreement to run a B-team of McLaren sourced customer cars … but then that fell through (and McLaren is now in an agreement with Force India of all things) and Dave Richards was left out in the cold. But now, a-HA!, Honda bails. And all their bright, shiny toys (like rolling road wind tunnels and server farms you'd ordinarily find in places like Fort Mead) could be picked up for Pence on the Pound. And Dave Richards has a LOT of those. But wait, it gets even better. "To boost the chances of a sale, embarrassed Honda has offered to bear the team's outstanding debts, and offer for sale the excellent facilities of the squad for a nominal fee as low as $1." says the news sources. That low-low, fire sale price does not come without strings however. "The successful buyer would have to convince Honda that it could safeguard the future of the team, even if many of the 700 employees would be retrenched as the annual budget is slashed from its current $300 million to as little as $70m." Yeah, that's a pretty tall order … but what it DOES do is make the nut of running an F1 team in the tens of millions of dollars range, rather than the hundreds of millions. That would be very attractive to a guy like Richards. "The Daily Telegraph" said that Dave Richards, could be in a position to seal the deal by the end of this weekend. It ain't over yet folks Source: SpeedTV