Toyota To Stay In F1 Despite Loss

Following a string of teams announcing their departure from motorsport, Toyota has promised it is committed to continuing in F1, despite what will reportedly be its first operating loss for 70 years.

Toyota is predicted to lose £1.1bn by the end of March 2009, a far cry from the scheduled £4.5bn profit, which it had promised to ¬continue fielding its team.

Speculation had circled that the Japanese car company would quit after Subaru and Suzuki quit motorsport last week, and Honda announced its intention to sell its F1 team.

But Toyota claims that rather than pulling out of the sport, it wants to revisit the question of revenue dispersion, a current topic of conflict that has risen between F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone and the teams’ collective association, Fota.

Currently, F1 teams receive half of all revenues. Toyota’s team president and Fota’s vice president, John Howett, cited football’s Champions League as an example of how other sports deal out revenues, saying that teams receive ‘upwards of 96-97 percent of revenues that is redistributed depending on where you finish.’

Howett joins Fota chairmain and Ferrari’s team president Luca di Montezemolo in the call to re-examine monetary distribution within F1.