Until recently there was a feeling that the sports at the top end of the international interest scale, like football and motor racing, could defy the credit crunch; just as the pundits reported that the super-rich would keep buying yachts. It doesn't look like it this morning with Japanese giant Honda closing its Formula One team and giving itself only until January to find someone else willing to pour a few hundred million down the drain. Which probably means redundancy for the hundreds of people who work in Honda's F1 operation in Brackley in the UK and its two drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. Honda re-entered F1 in 2005 following a huge period of success as engine supplier to the Williams team a decade earlier but, apart from a single victory by Button in Hungary in 2006, has struggled. This year Button and Barrichello were starting from almost the back of the grid as the Hondas remained resolutely uncompetitive, a humiliating experience for one of the world's biggest and most sophisticated motor manufacturers. But, even more to the point, Honda's consumer sales have fallen off a cliff this year, in line with most of the rest of the motor industry, so spending £300m a year on a duff F1 team hardly looks like a good idea. As ever a buyer for the F1 team will be sought in the Middle East but even the sheikhs are feeling the pinch; oil is now below $50 a barrel and our friends from the desert have sunk billions into struggling US banks only to see the value of these investments carry on shrinking. Car manufacturers invest in F1 to gain global TV coverage (not so useful when you come last) and to hone their engineering capability. Honda hasn't scored on either count.