Honda F1 employees, like driver Jenson Button, face an uncertain future as the team quits a sport it first entered in the 1960s

Californian Richie Ginther was Honda's first star driver, recording his only F1 win in a Honda car in 1965

John Surtees, the only person to win World Championships on both two and four wheels, won the Italian Grand Prix for Honda in 1967

Aside from two Grand Prix wins, in 1965 and 1967, Honda enjoyed only modest success, bowing out of the sport at the end of 1968

Honda returned as an engine supplier in the 1980s, enjoying great success first with the Williams team and then McLaren

Honda and McLaren won four drivers' titles: three for Ayrton Senna (above) and one for Alain Prost, adding to their one with Williams

Honda officially quit F1 in 1992, but satellite company Mugen Honda helped Damon Hill and Jordan to victory in the 1998 Belgian GP

In 1999, Heinz-Harald Frentzen won two races for Jordan-Mugen, and the German was a title contender until late in the season

Honda nearly returned to F1 as a constructor in 1999, testing a development car (above), but the project was shelved

However, by the following year Honda had entered a partnership with British American Tobacco, supplying engines to the BAR team

By 2006 Honda had their own team, with British star Jenson Button, here pictured ahead of McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, signed up to drive

It now looks as though Button's Hungarian Grand Prix victory in 2006 may prove to be Honda's final Formula One success

The end of the road? Jenson Button retires from qualifying in the final race of 2008 in Brazil, in what looks like being Honda's final GP