QUESTIONS ABOUND; Kimi Raikkonen wins in Japan as Honda works on its future with the purchase of BAR.(Motorsports)

Byline: ALAN HENRY

The Japanese Grand Prix provided excitement off and on the track like few other races this season.

Honda monopolized the lion's share of media attention over the weekend following last week's announcement it will buy British American Racing. Honda then bounced into a tight public relations corner when it said it would also supply engines to a new team-a team that will provide a berth for Takuma Sato, who is being punted from BAR after the upcoming season-ending race in Shanghai.

Taking control of BAR was the easy part for Honda. Having supplied engines since 2000, Honda decided last year to buy a 45 percent stake in the team. That signaled its intent to buy controlling interest from British American Tobacco. For its part BAT, having spent the better part of $1 billion since its founding in 1998, was happy for an exit route from a sport in which tobacco sponsorship has become uncomfortably sensitive.

"We began negotiations in the summer to increase our share [in BAR] from 45 percent to full acquisition,'' Honda's operating officer Hiroshi Oshima said. "We want to race as Honda, and we want to challenge for the championship. We want to take the team in a better direction.''

Honda also said it would rename the new team in agreement with future sponsors. "Basically it will be 100 percent Honda from 2006,'' Oshima said. Word is Honda paid a modest $20 million or thereabouts for the 55 percent stake, so keen was BAT to close the deal.

As for Sato, the impetus to continue supporting him in F1 is driven by several factors. Firstly, Honda president Takeo Fukui was virtually attacked at a recent launch of the company's new Civic; the home-town media fired a barrage of hostile questions about Sato's dismissal from BAR. In a country as formal and reserved as Japan, that is not the norm, but this driver's popularity at home is simply huge.