The expected deal between Hispania F1 and Toyota Motorsport has been called off due to late payments, the Cologne based motorsport arm of Toyota has revealed.
A deal had been expected today which would have seen HRT enter a partnership with Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) for the use of their 2010 chassis, which failed to race, and the use of their Cologne facilities which included two-wind tunnels.
However, a statement from TMG announced that all ties between the two companies had been severed.
“Toyota Motorsport GmbH confirms that all cooperation with Hispania Racing F1 Team (HRT) has been terminated and will not resume,” read the statement.
“TMG retains all intellectual property rights to its current F1 car and is completely free to pursue other projects and support new customers for its high-performance engineering services.
“TMG regrets that HRT has not met its contractual payment obligations and will pursue all available options to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this matter.”
It isn’t clear what Hispania will now do for the 2011 season as they don’t design their own chassis, unlike the rest of the grid.
Options include using their current 2010 car, with little time and small rule changes, this could be the most viable option. They could go back to Dallara, the company behind the HRT-F110, however that deal ended on less than favourable terms, therefore a deal with Lola or Epsilon Euskadi is more likely.
