Come this weekend we will bid farewell to several independant F1 Teams. Two teams namely Minardi and Sauber will be taken over by Redbull Racing and BMW respectively. Coming to 2006 will also see the Jordan team loose their name to a new outfit.

With F1 becoming very competitive and having more and more races each year, it is becoming more difficult for such independant team to keep up with the escalating cost. Last year we have 17 races and this year, the number of races increased to 19. The ban in tobacco adverting in many racing track will also see many teams gaining less sponsors. Even BAR, British American Racing that feature their tobacco brand 555 and Lucky Strike in their racing car think it is better and wiser to sell their stake to Honda.

In the past, we too notice that it is generally difficult to keep independant team afloat. The Prost Racing Team formerly owned by Alain Prost went out of business, out of F1 without even able to find a buyer.

The departute of Paul Stoddart will no doubt have big impact on F1 arena. Paul being a very out spoken person often speak his mind loud and clear on many F1 issues. The recent one being his strong remark against the F1 President Max Mosley on US GP debacle. We are surely going to miss him.