First to report Honda’s pullout from Formula One, a sign financial crisis is hitting the sport hard.

Honda’s Formula One team became one of the first high profile sporting casualties of the financial crisis last week when the Japanese motor company said it would sell the team and pull out of racing. A well-placed source within the team gave the news to Reuters some seven hours or so before the official announcement on December 5 in Tokyo. Media around the world pounced on the story. We were also swift out of the starting grid after the official announcement and made clear in all our stories how the world of sport was being hit by the global economic slowdown.