Like Honda at the end of last year, BMW’s announcement of their F1 pullout was quite a shock. 2009 hasn’t been particularly kind to them in compared to 2008, they still managed a couple of podiums and beat early hot ticket Williams into fifth place in the constructor’s championship.

However, like Honda, they abandoned the 2008 car early to work on this year’s and that simply didn’t work out very well when compared to Brawn’s successes.

What’s more, the 2010 prospects for the Hinwil based team is dubious at best. BMW’s refusal to sign the Concorde agreement and delay finding a new owner for the team meant that the 13th slot on the grid was given to the Lotus team and any hope of seeing them in F1 next year (assuming that all the teams signed up actually do make it through the winter) means getting support from all the other teams. That support just isn’t there.

Peter Sauber has sold his stake in the team, so we lose both BMW and Sauber names from F1 next year, even in the unlikely event of the team arriving on the grid in March.

Farewell to both marques.

(As a side note, these aren’t the greatest pictures from the 2008 Canadian GP, but I took them. So there.)