ANALYSIS - F1 will live on without Toyota

By Alan Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) - Big-spending Toyota's exit from Formula One leaves the sport accelerating towards a future with minimal Japanese involvement, less money and the balance of power swinging back to privately-owned teams.

While the manufacturers will still provide the backbone, there will be only three of them in 2010 -- FIAT-owned Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault.

Toyota join BMW and Honda in pulling out of the sport in the space of less than a year, with Renault seemingly minded to carry on despite their suspended permanent ban for involvement in a race-fixing scandal.

"Perhaps this is the end of a decade of manufacturer dominance in Formula One and what we will now see over the next decade is a sport that resembles much more closely the 1990s," Williams chief executive Adam Parr told Reuters.

The exodus is undeniably a blow to the sport's prestige and pulling power, but one that it will weather. Even without Toyota, there should still be more teams next season than there have been for years.

Mercedes are set to buck the trend by buying a majority stake in champions Brawn while maintaining, for the time being, their 40 percent shareholding in McLaren.

Toyota, who entered in 2002, will join the ranks of those that came and went with barely a ripple. Their demise is to be regretted, but others on the Formula One scrapheap drew far more mourners to the funeral.

"As far as Formula One is concerned, it is just a fact of life that teams come and go," added Parr.