Fuji withdraws from F1 schedule

The Japanese Grand Prix is facing an uncertain future after Fuji Speedway announced that it was no longer willing to hold the race.

The Toyota-owned track had been set to share the Japanese round of the World Championship with Honda's Suzuka circuit, alternating on an annual basis.

With Suzuka back on the calendar this year, Fuji was intended as the venue for the 2010 race, but the circuit announced today that it was pulling out of F1 due to the economic downturn.

"In view of the sharply deteriorating business conditions and few signs of a rapid economic recovery, we decided it would be extremely difficult to continue holding the F1 Japanese Grand Prix," said a Fuji statement.

Fuji, which hosted the first Japanese GPs in 1976 and 1977, had undergone a huge revamp to bring it up to F1 standard earlier in the decade, but is now set to exit the schedule having held just two races in the modern era.

It won the right to host the race from Suzuka and returned to the calendar in 2007, when Lewis Hamilton famously won an extraordinarily wet race.

Shortly afterwards, it was announced that Fuji and Suzuka would alternate after 2008, with Suzuka returning this season.

Fernando Alonso won last year's Fuji event, which now appears to have been the circuit's F1 swansong.

With Suzuka's owner Honda having sold its F1 team to Ross Brawn at the start of the year as it felt it could no longer be in the sport during the recession, today's news raises questions about whether Honda would be prepared to hold a GP at Suzuka every year now that it can no longer share the task with Fuji.