Is the Labour Government Going to Save Jenson Button’s Career?

For the first time in ages the BBC website published an article about Honda (the website is really going to have to step up if it wants any chance of competing with the official F1 site).  The BBC article suggests that there still aren’t any significant developments, but this doesn’t seem to be bad news.

The article repeats the news I’ve read so many times before that “we shouldn’t worry that January is almost over, blah, blah, Nick Fry is still confident…blah, blah.”  The new news that the BBC article reports is that there has possibly already been a deal made and that all that remains to be done is for Honda to sign a contract in Japan.  I am excited by this but do you remember "Slim-gate"? I’m not too optimistic at this point. 

Far more useful to me was the Guardian website. (No, I’m not a regular reader of that paper but I get information where I can!)  The article by Matt Scott suggests that Lord Mandelson's £2.3bn bail-out of the car industry could help Honda F1 racing as technically the formula one team meets the criteria to benefit from assistance.  The key criteria for qualification are having a turnover in excess of £25m, (check) being at the cutting edge of innovation (check), reducing carbon emissions (erm, sort of check), and creating jobs (most certainly check).  So as you can see from my "checking system" the team does qualify for assistance.

Whilst this is good news as a taxpayer-backed support package for the team would help generate more interest from potential buyers, I’m not sure how happy the British tax payers would be.  I would love to help support the team I have supported for such a long time but I think many will find it difficult to pay for something to survive in an extravagant world.  The 700 Brackley jobs are important but I’m not sure if the public will see past the government helping fund an F1 team.

Anyway this is all academic if you believe the speculation that Honda already have a buyer and are simply waiting to dot the I’s and cross the T’s.  This I’m not sure about, all I know for certain is that it will take six weeks to change the car to compensate for a new engine.  Though Ferrari are well and truly out of it, I’m encouraged by how keen Mercedes seem to be. 

Fingers crossed we will get more answers and fingers crossed the team get a cast iron engine by about the 14th February!