The credit crunch claimed its first victim in Formula One today when the Japanese carmaker Honda announced that it was pulling out of the sport immediately.

The dramatic exit leaves Formula One shorn of one of its biggest backers and the head of motorsport’s governing body predicted that more teams would be forced to close down.

Honda’s decision could leave the team’s drivers, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, sidelined next season. It also means more than 600 staff at the team's headquarters in Brackley, Northamptonshire, face unemployment in the new year.

Honda insisted today that it would attempt to sell the team as a going concern able to compete in next season’s championship, but in the current economic climate it may prove difficult to secure a buyer.

Max Mosley, head of the FIA, said that he feared more teams would be forced out of the sport following Honda’s withdrawal.

“Well it’s very sad but it’s not exactly a surprise: we’ve been expecting to lose one of the manufacturers or maybe even more than one,” Mr Mosley said.

“For some time the fundamental difficulty is that the top teams are employing between 700 and a thousand people just to put two cars on the grid 18 times a year and that’s obviously unsustainable even in good economic times - and of course in the present situation it’s a disaster.”

Until now it was assumed that Mr Mosley’s warnings about the impending failure of F1 teams concerned only the smaller ventures rather that one the major manufacturer-linked teams.

The withdrawal of Honda raises fears that all of the teams are susceptible in the current climate. The teams held a meeting yesterday designed to help slash the cost of running a Formula One cars by introducing a common engine or cheaper chasis.

It costs around £200 million per year to compete in the championship, but until now Honda has always maintained that the money is worth it: being in motor sport at the highest level attracts the best engineers to the company as well as promoting the brand to consumers.

Takeo Fukui, president of Honda, delivered the grim word that 2008 would be the company’s last season of participation in the sport today with his head slumped low.

The decision, said Mr Fukui, had arisen because of the “quickly deteriorating operating environment” brought on by the US sub-prime implosion and the sudden contraction of world economies.