TOKYO — Honda Motor pulled out of Formula One racing Friday to save more than $978 million a year as it scrambles to cut costs amid the global market meltdown.

President Takeo Fukui is looking to sell the team and won’t field a car when the next F1 season starts in March. The company also won’t supply engines to other teams.

The 350 engineers working on Honda’s F1 project will be transferred to other duties, including the development of environmentally friendly hybrid drive trains, Fukui told reporters.

“This difficult decision has been made in light of the quickly deteriorating operating environment facing the global auto industry,” Fukui said. “Honda must protect its core business.”

Honda has cut jobs in Japan, reduced production and lowered its profit forecast in the face of the global credit crisis and falling sales. Fukui said it costs 20 billion yen ($978 million) a year to operate the F1 team, not including costs for developing the engine and body.

Honda finished ninth of the eleven teams in the F1 constructors’ championship last season and has suffered a dearth of checkered flags since it returned to the racing series in 2000, logging only one first-place finish.

TOKYO (Reuters) — Toyota Motor said on Tuesday it will cut management bonuses by 10 percent as the global economic slowdown bites hard and prompts it to reduce production further in Japan.

The world’s largest automaker is cutting bonuses for roughly 5,000 managers as the downturn keeps customers away from showrooms worldwide, a company spokesman said.

Automakers are reeling from the worst downturn in decades as sales slump in the United States and Europe and even in developing markets such as China, which carmakers had hoped would fuel near-term growth.

With inventory building everywhere, carmakers are cutting back production, extending temporary plant closures and seeking help from governments to ride out savage cutbacks in consumer spending.

Toyota will halt production at one of three assembly lines at its Tahara factory in central Japan for two days at the end of this month, resulting in a loss of less than 5,000 cars, another spokesman said. The line produces the LS, GS and IS models for the premium Lexus marque.

Car sales in Japan, excluding 660cc minivehicles, fell 27 percent in November, industry data showed on Monday, with sales tumbling at Toyota and its rivals Nissan Motor and Honda Motor.

Lexus sales in Japan are down 24 percent in the year to date and are falling hard also in the United States, the brand’s main market.