The balance sheet for Honda’s latest fiscal year has been dramatic. As the company announced, Honda has posted a loss of $2.68 billion for 2025. A brutally outsized figure that shakes the entire company, but which especially draws attention to one area of Honda: Formula One.
Since going public in 1957, Honda had never posted numbers as bad as those for 2025. That means last year’s balance sheet was even worse than during the pandemic years. This is especially startling for Formula One for a simple reason: after the lockdown, around 2020, Honda decided to withdraw from Formula One.
Honda has lost $2.68 billion in 2025
The week last Honda announced the results of its Japanese fiscal year that ended last March. And the figures are far from good. Honda lost ¥423 billion, which at current exchange rates amounts to about $2.68 billion. Such alarming figures are the worst the Golden Wing brand has ever suffered.
The numbers worry the entire company, but especially a department: the racing division. And 2025’s losses are the worst Honda has suffered since going public back in 1957, nearly 70 years ago. That means Honda has posted worse numbers even than during the pandemic years, and we already know what happened back then.
In October 2020, after the lockdown, Honda decided to withdraw from Formula One, largely supported by the poor financial results. Now they are back in Formula One, and the dire situation they are in with Aston Martin is hardly an incentive to keep the project afloat while still losing money.
In statements collected by Motorsport-Total, Honda’s chief executive Toshihiro Mibe acknowledges that much of these losses relate to electric cars and, more broadly, the brand’s electrification strategy, as well as some failed investments in the United States due to Donald Trump’s policies.
For now, according to Mibe, the commitment to Formula One remains in place, but only until 2031, which is when the Concorde Agreement ends. After that the FIA is flirting with V8 engines with a turbo and only a small electric portion that could be the final nudge pushing Honda out of Formula One if its numbers do not improve.
What Honda has also confirmed is that the plan for all its cars to be electric by 2040 has been postponed for now. Money has spoken.
Images | Honda
