With the Christmas break behind us and launch season about to get underway with testing set to follow soon afterwards, staff at Honda Racing are still in the dark regarding their futures. Time is literally running out for the team to be able to make a smooth transition into the 2009 season with new owners and despite claims that there are a dozen interested parties, none seem interested enough to put their money where their mouth is.

One such party, Dave Richards, has recently gone on record stating that he will not be the one to rescue the Brackley based squad, not because he doesn’t want to, but because the costs involved with running a Formula One team are still way too high, regardless of the new cost cutting measures.

Speaking to ITV recently, former Red Bull racer David Coulthard doesn’t think Richards denial is anything more than the fact that he will need to find the money to take on such a project, and the fact that he may not be able to do so is not a sign that Formula One is collapsing, but instead a reflection on the current economical crisis.

“I think it is wrong to presume that because six weeks ago Honda announced they were selling the team that David, with all his other business interests, would suddenly say ‘I’ll buy that’ and then expect him to have everything in place to do a good job,” the Scot said. “If he was taking the team over in its entirety then you could say they’ve got marketing people employed, they’ve got sponsorship finders employed, it’s a complete ready-to-go business but you’ve got to fund it. If his funding is going into his Aston [Martin] programme and all his other programmes you then have to find additional funds.”

“To find those additional funds you’ve got to go to a bank, who are not really lending at the moment, or you’re private investors but that is also a difficult thing right now. It’s a sign of the times rather than that Formula 1 is too expensive particularly. I’m sure if we go back in time there have probably been more expensive periods in Formula 1, not in terms of the headline figure, but relatively to that time.”