Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One chief, says that Honda's withdrawal from the sport provides a "wake-up call" to overspending teams and underlines the need to cut costs.

Honda's announcement in Tokyo that it was pulling out due the slowdown in the global economy didn't surprise Ecclestone, who had spent much of the year campaigning with FIA president Max Mosley to get teams to reduce their costs, principally by agreeing to a standardized engine.

"This is a wake-up call," Ecclestone said. "If you and I wanted to run a Formula One team, we wouldn't need to have to spend what they are spending at the moment — probably £200 million a year to do it.

"The trouble is the teams are basically run by technicians who should probably be at home playing with their PlayStations rather than spending fortunes to win races."

Ecclestone believes the sport needs to start engaging with its fans again. "The average guy in the street doesn't care how many cylinders the car has, doesn't know, or what the capacity of the engine is, doesn't care," he added. "We are in the business of entertainment and we should be building race cars to race."

FIA, motor sport's Paris-based governing body, said in a statement that "the global economic downturn has only exacerbated an already critical situation."

Mosley is trying to push through cost-cutting measures to safeguard the future of the sport, primarily a standardized engine to be supplied by Cosworth, and transmission from Xtrac and Ricardo from 2010.

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