Former Honda team to race in 2009

Nick Fry has today announced that the former Honda team will survive to race another season.    Speaking after a meeting of the F1 teams' association Fota, Fry said

"I think it is correct to say that our team has and will benefit in the future from FOTA in two ways," he added. "The first one is clearly the cost reductions will help us enormously in our challenges the team will face in the next two or three years, but I think as important as the cost reduction is the level of support that we have received from all the teams.

"In particular that I would like say that on the day that Honda announced their withdrawal from the sport we received support from Luca di Montezemolo personally, unconditional support for our team and from Ron Dennis.

"There has been an enormous amount of activity behind the scenes, everyone on the stage here has helped us preserve our team and I think myself and Ross and our 700 employees all thank them for that. So the answer is yes (the team would have died without FOTA)."

The new name of the team has not been released but it is expected that the team will run a car at Silverstone on Friday. The announcement appears to confirm speculation  of a  buy-out led by the current management of Fry and Brawn.  Jenson Button is rumoured to be  one of the drivers alongside  Rubens Barrichello