By pitpass.com (07/08/2003)
August 7 2003

Lucky Strike BAR Honda boss David Richards has indicated that he may leave BAR, and indeed turn his back on F1, at the end of the 2006 season. Since taking over the Brackley based outfit, just twenty-four hours before it launched its 2002 contender, the Englishman has made major changes to the team which has seen it improve slowly but surely, with the result that at after the recent German GP it is fifth in the constructors' championship.

Richards has hinted that in 2006 however, when he will be 55, it may be time to move or even retire.

"I stopped driving in 1981 when Ari Vatanen and I won the World Rally Championship," he told Autosport magazine. "I stopped running my rally team ten years later when we had won three world titles," he added, referring to Prodrive.

"I have got a clear agenda at the moment with the F1 programme that we have got, but I have got to have another life some day, so I have just set a timetable for myself and set personal goals until the end of 2006.

"At the end of '06 I have every intention of doing something else," he added.

It's understood that Richards is actually contracted by British American Tobacco and therefore has no shareholding in the team.

Richards in widely respected not merely in the F1 pitlane but within the motorsport industry and some people have even suggested that he might be a possible successor to Bernie Ecclestone.

This article was written by pitpass.com and is used with permission.