When CEO Takeo Fukui says he would spend $ 10 billion to rack up a Formula One victory for Honda, you get the sense that he really means it. Under Fukui's five-year leadership, Honda Motor's car sales have jumped by a third and profits by an even bigger margin to a record $5.8 billion last year. But it's the lack of an Fl win that sticks in the craw of the 63-year-old former engineer, who joined Honda precisely because it was the first Japanese automaker to enter the world's premier motor sport. Fukui just doesn't like to lose. "When it comes to Fl, our score is zero. It kills me," Fukui, once an amateur racer himself, told a small group of reporters last week. "If I could fix it with a trillion yen I would, but it's not a problem that money can solve." The Tokyo native is taking that same fierce competitive streak to the battle against giant Toyota Motor in gasoline-electric hybrid technology. Toyota beat Honda to the hybrid market by two years with its Prius in 1997. The vastly improved second-generation Prius in 2003 became an instant hit, helping Japan's top automaker win a reputation overnight as the frontrunner in green technology. Honda's own efforts have been stop-and-go. After launching the Insight two-seater in 1999, Japan's No.2 automaker discontinued sales of two underpowered hybrid models, leaving the gasoline-electric Civic and hybrid sales at a fraction of Toyota's. Honda detailed plans last week to change that. Using technological advances that would make its hybrid system cheaper and more profitable, Honda will roll out three affordable hybrid cars over the next few years. With gasoline prices skyrocketing, Honda hopes to sell about 500,000 hybrids a year by 2015