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Bernie Ecclestone has spent much of today fending off journalistic enquiries about News Corrp/Exor’s interest in buying into F1, mostly with snappy one liners.

However he has given a bit more of an insight into his position in a Q&A on his own http://www.formula1.com website. It’s never easy to second guess what his real agenda is, but he seems to be genuinely annoyed by recent developments.

Bernie played down News Corp’s confirmation of its interest.

“Somebody might say that they want to do it, but it doesn’t mean that when somebody wants to buy something the owner wants to sell,” said Bernie. “And CVC made it very clear that they don’t want to sell.”

Asked if F1 would continue unchanged, he said: “Yes, because if people don’t want to sell, others have to accept that fact. It’s as simple as that.”

Elaborating on Rupert Murdoch’s interest, Bernie made some interesting comments on recent dealings with his company.

“Murdoch hasn’t got anything really big to drive their TV audiences and Formula One would be good for that. They have been trying to buy the TV rights from us for a long time, but we won’t because they are not free-to-air television broadcasters. They are a subscription service.

“Very recently they wanted to do something in Germany, in the UK and in Italy, where they are, but we couldn’t do it. Sky is doing an incredible job but if you look at their audience they are nowhere. With these figures it would be almost impossible for teams to find sponsors. That would be suicidal.”

Bernie agreed that the current healthy state of F1 had attracted the interest of potential buyers.

“Probably, but firstly they didn’t know if it was for sale, and secondly they didn’t know what the price tag was. I would never start to say that I’m interested in something without knowing how much it is. There have been so many rumours out there lately and I go along with Colin Chapman – why spoil a good story with the truth?”

Inevitably he had a viewpoint on suggestions that several top teams will meet next week to discuss the future. Bernie said he had not been contacted about the meeting.

“No. But I thought that Ferrari won’t need to go because one of the people who hopes he’s going to be an investor owns Ferrari, so that whole story sounds a bit weird. You have to be careful about such rumours, but then again rumours are part of Formula One and always have been.

“I hope these people come to their senses. The teams should be happy to have somebody like CVC not selling to the wrong people, trying to maintain a good level for them and supporting me so that I can go to work and earn some money for the teams.”

Lewis Hamilton hasn’t given up his hopes of a good race tomorrow despite being disappointed to be bumped down to fourth by Nico Rosberg.

Traditionally Istanbul is a track where cars in the less favourable even numbered grid slots suffer more than elsewhere.

“Obviously we’re starting on the dirty of the grid,” said Hamilton. “It’s going to be very, very hard to get ahead of the Mercedes, they’re very quick on the straight. The Red Bulls will disappear, because it’s too easy for them. But you never know what the weather’s going to do. We’ll put up a good fight like we did last year and in the last race. Fingers crossed, we can gain some places.”

In China Hamilton saved a set of new option tyres for Sunday, but he was unable to do it this time, although both Red Bull drivers have.

“I wanted to do the same thing, and we ended up going out and doing two runs, which is not necessarily the right thing to do. Last race with the extra set of tyre we didn’t benefit much from them, so it’s difficult to know how much the benefit will be.”

Michael Schumacher was frustrated to qualify only eighth in Turkey after looking good in FP3.

Schumacher was second fastest and only 0.001s off Sebastian Vettel in the morning session. However in qualifying he was five places and 0.7s behind team mate Nico Rosberg, who was third.

“I’m not happy at all,” said Schumacher. “It’s so far off, that’s a bit unusual. It didn’t really work out at all, for whatever reason it wasn’t there compared to what I had this morning.

“I struggled already in Q2, the track certainly was better than it was this morning and we couldn’t reproduce what we did this morning. We have to understand what’s going on. The more I pushed, the more things went wrong. Just at the end there was no grip left.”

John Elkann – the boss of both Fiat and the Exor group that has expressed an interest in taking over F1 – says he wants to modernise the sport.

The Exor/News Corp saga has dominated conversations in Turkey this weekend.

“Whoever is into motors will obviously be tempted to be part of this world,” he was reported as saying by AGI. “We are interested in making this sport more modern and younger. We’re still going through a preliminary phase but we’re trying to understand if there are the grounds to carry on.

“We would like to help ensure the stability of this great sport and think about its future.”

Smoke still wafts from the back of the truck as the clean-up begins

Team Lotus suffered a major setback when one of its trucks was damaged in a fire early this morning.

The electrical fire started in the plant room, which houses the mechanism that raises the top level when the vehicle is parked in the paddock.

One mechanic admitted that there was ‘quite a lot of damage,’ while another source said the team’s data system had been affected, which may prove to be the most serious problem.

Update: The team confirms that there is no problem with its data systems although they were in that truck, whose upper level was also the gearbox/hydraulics workshop. The truck will have to go back to its maker for repairs and won’t be back in action until Valencia.

Jenson Button finished at the top of the times in Turkey today, albeit only just ahead of Nico Rosberg.

As ever the true picture will only emerge in qualifying, but it was a respectable start to the Istanbul weekend for the McLaren driver.

Button made only a brief appearance in the morning’s rain as the team opted to save its wet and intermediate tyres, on the basis that it could rain on Sunday.

“The day was pretty good,” said Button. “I had a quiet morning, lots of tea, didn’t do any running in the first session because it was very wet, and also we didn’t want to use too many sets of wet tyres, because you are limited. This afternoon we did quite a bit of running, which was positive.”

McLaren’s biggest problem is under braking for Turn 12, where all the cars are bouncing on the bumps, but the MP4-26 appears to be struggling more than most.

“My feet are hurting a little bit from Turn 12, on the bumps! I don’t know if you’ve watched the cars there, but wow, it’s bumpy, it’s like they put a motocross jump in, just before the corner.

“Apart from that I’m relatively happy. There’s always things that you want to improve. The car is working reasonably well. I’ve been trying a few things out with the limited running that we have. And I think we’ve made some good progress. There’s a lot of data, but trying to get the car to ride the bumps well into Turn 12 is something that’s been a little bit difficult. But we’re trying our best, and I think we’ve improved a little bit, which is good.”

Button said a lot of thought is going into protecting the tyres, especially through Turn 8.

“We ran both tyres in the session, as I think everyone did. Turn 8 is very difficult for the car, because you can damage fronts, you can damage rears, it’s whatever your balance is. It’s about getting the balance right. We’ve concentrated on that quite a bit today. And the car’s working well.

“We haven’t got everything that we wanted to put on the car here, for certain reasons, which is disappointing. We do have some updates on the car here, which is nice.”

Fernando Alonso was upbeat in Turkey today, but the former World Champion cautioned that it was still too early to say how successful Ferrari’s latest updates have been.

Alonso lost some time with some problems, including a moment when he stopped before the pit entry and had to be pushed into the garage. He finished the day a modest 11^th, while team mate Felipe Massa was sixth.

“It’s difficult to evaluate right now because we just finished practice, but the car felt good. Felt OK this morning, felt OK this afternoon. We had some mechanical issues in my car, but nothing too worrying. So we’ll see tomorrow.

“In terms of performance as I said it’s difficult to evaluate after a Friday, you never know what the others are doing as well, but we did a step forward. We need to see how big it was.

“All the improvements we’ve brought here are aerodynamic parts, obviously what you feel in the car is a little bit more overall grip. If it’s down to the tyres, to the improvements, to the track conditions, or everybody’s feeling a good grip, we don’t know. It’s too early to say, but we’ll wait for tomorrow. The target is to be fighting with them.

“I think Mercedes also improved a lot, they are quick. Renault I think also, they will also be competitive. So it’s tough. I think two or three tenths, you can be fourth or fifth, or ninth, so we just need to make our best tomorrow. We need to take out the best of the car, the maximum potential we have, and be in front of all these people.”

Alonso says he hasn’t learned much about tyre wear, and especially the impact of Turn 8.

“I didn’t complete enough laps to answer this question completely. We lost a bit of time in the garage with some problems in the car, and then I think I did only six or seven laps in the long runs.

“In those laps it felt OK, but it’s a question mark after those laps what is going to happen to the tyres, and how the track will improve as well during the weekend, because it was the first laps on dry tyres for any category so far this weekend.

“We’ll see after GP2, after GP3, and tomorrow’s qualifying how the race goes. But there is no doubt that it’s a stressful circuit for the tyres.”

Sebastian Vettel was unperturbed after missing the Friday afternoon practice session in Turkey following his heavy crash in the morning.

Vettel damaged all four corners of the RB7 when he spun off after running just four laps in the rain. The Red Bull crew was unable to repair the car in time for him to get out in what turned out to be the dry second session.

“Unfortunately we couldn’t get the car ready in time, I’m sorry for the guys,” said Vettel. “It makes it a bit more difficult no doubt, but I don’t think it will be a big problem. We know the track quite well from the last years. In the end it was only one afternoon we had in the dry. Tomorrow I think it will be dry.

“We’ll see. I‘m still confident for tomorrow. Everything is open. It looks fairly close, this afternoon I had a bit more time to watch the times than usually. I think it will be quite exciting tomorrow.”

Vettel spent some time in the garage while the crew worked on his car rather than hiding in the motorhome.

“It was only fair. Obviously I apologised, because it was not my intention to damage the car. But this is racing, this can happen. The most important thing is that we are still here. Of course this means a lot of work for the mechanics now, but it’s only fair to show them that I am with them, because if I’m struggling or I have a problem they are with me as well.”

Former BAR boss Craig Pollock has confirmed that he’s involved in a project to create a turbo customer F1 engine for 2013.

The PURE corporation counts Mecachrome – long associated with Renault – as one of its partners. Former Renault F1 engine head Christian Contzen is a consultant and Jean-Pierre Boudy, another leading ex-Renault man, is also involved.

Pollock says he now needs to find potential customers among the existing teams, although that clearly won’t be easy.

“The project has started up since the beginning of the year,” Pollock told Reuters. “And we are in a design and development stage at the moment but we now have a good package that we can go forward and start talking to teams.

“Our design team have actually been working on this since the announcement on December 10.We are very much down the road, probably the same if not further ahead than the key manufacturers.

“Formula One to us is one project but we have other projects that we are working on in marine engines, aviation, helicopter engines. We are definitely looking to use Formula One as a test bed to be able to take cleaner technology back into the mainstream.”

PURE also offered a supportive quote from Jean Todt: “We welcome PURE to Formula One. The rule changes for 2013 have been developed to provide lower cost, greener and more fuel efficient technologies for Formula One. We wish PURE every success in developing powertrains compliant with the new FIA regulations.”

The arrival of a new manufacturer will clearly give Todt more ammunition as he tries to fend off Bernie Ecclestone’s attempts to change or delay the 2013 rules package.

The story of News Corporation’s interest in F1 took another turn tonight when the company confirmed its intentions to explore a possible co-operation with Exor, the investment company in which the Agnelli family has a majority stake.

Exor owns stakes in Fiat and the Juventus football team, and is run by Fiat boss John Elkann.

A vaguely worded statement tonight said: “EXOR, one of Europe’s largest listed investment companies, and News Corporation, the global media group, confirm that they are in the early stages of exploring the possibility of creating a consortium with a view to formulating a long‐term plan for the development of Formula One in the interests of the participants and the fans.

“Over the coming weeks and months, EXOR and News Corporation will approach potential minority partners and key stakeholders in the sport. There can be no certainty that this will lead to an approach to Formula One’s current owners.”

There was no mention of Carlos Slim but he is thought to be a potential partner in the deal.