The Hispania Racing Team's plan to link up in a technical partnership with Toyota have been abandoned after the Japanese manufacturer announced it had terminated its deal with the new team.
It is understood that HRT was looking at a deal that would see it use the mothballed Toyota F1 team's planned 2010 car as the basis for next year's challenger – as well as having use of certain facilities at the Toyota factory in Cologne, Germany. However, in a statement issued on Monday, Toyota Motorsport announced that the plans had been called off because scheduled payments had not been made.
"Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) confirms that all cooperation with Hispania Racing F1 Team (HRT) has been terminated and will not resume," the statement read. "TMG retains all intellectual property rights to its current F1 car and is completely free to pursue other projects and support new customers for its high-performance engineering services.
"TMG regrets that HRT has not met its contractual payment obligations and will pursue all available options to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this matter."