Tag Archives: Bernie Ecclestone

Bernie Ecclestone has downplayed the possibility of a chunk of the F1 business being sold, just a couple of days after suggesting to a televised business forum that a deal could happen before the end of this year.

CVC’s 35.5% shareholding is potentially up for grabs, although Ecclestone said today that its boss Donald McKenzie is still not keen to sell

“I said there are three people that are interested in buying,” Ecclestone commented in Sochi today. “They have been talking a little bit, but now they are a lot more interested. If the shareholders want to sell, they will sell.

“I am not selling. That is what the problem is. Mr McKenzie, who is the controlling shareholder, also doesn’t want to sell. If someone wants to buy and someone doesn’t want to sell it is difficult.”

Ecclestone also made it clear that a deal was no nearer than it has been in the past.

“Anyone that does follow F1 will know we have been here a million times.”

He also scotched suggestions that he might retire and leave F1 any time soon: “I don’t need to leave it at the moment. But the three people who are interested in buying it asked me to sign a contract to make sure I stay with them.”

Bernie Ecclestone has downplayed the controversy over the apparent lack of coverage of Mercedes on the TV world feed of the Japanese GP.

After the race senior Mercedes figures, including Niki Lauda, expressed their frustration that Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were hardly featured.

Inevitably some observers suggested that keeping the silver cars off the screens was a ‘punishment’ from Ecclestone, either because the Stuttgart manufacturer has refused to supply Red Bull, or for other reasons.

“People say there is no overtaking so what we showed is a helluva lot of overtaking,” Ecclestone said in Sochi today. “Actually if you look at the figures I think nearly all the teams got more or less the same amount of coverage.

“It’s no good just showing… We had the same with Michael. People don’t want to see one car alone on the track. If there’s some racing going on at the front, it’s good.”

Ecclestone also denied that Lauda had raised the issue with him.

“What’s it got to do with Niki Lauda? Lots of people were unhappy about things. He came and talked to me about something else.”

Bernie Ecclestone said today that he doesn’t know whether Dietrich Mateschitz will follow through on his threat to withdraw from F1 if Red Bull cannot find a competitive engine package for its two teams.

The F1 boss insisted in Sochi that he has no inside knowledge of what direction the Austrian billionaire will take.

“I am not worried because I don’t know,” he said. “I worry when I have to worry. If they leave? It is bad for F1, bad for the sport.”

Asked when he expected an answer from Red Bull he said: “They don’t have to give me any answers. They are in the championship. If they don’t turn up, we’ll know.”

Meanwhile Ecclestone made it clear that he’s frustrated that Mercedes opted not to work with Red Bull.

“They are supplying other people with no problems. Mercedes made a deal with Marussia, although I understand that Red Bull had asked for an engine before they dealt with Marussia. But I guess they looked at it as, if we supply engines to Red Bull, maybe they can beat us. If we supply engines to Marussia, maybe they won’t.”

Bernie also admitted there’s a limit to what he can do to convince Mercedes or Ferrari to supply a competitive engine.

“I can’t make these people do something. The only thing we can do is to stop them selling more than three teams with engines. That we can do. They can only have the right to supply three teams. We want them to supply more.”

Asked if Mateschitz was relying on his advice Ecclestone said: “He’s thinking about what he wants to do.”

F1 teams have asked Bernie Ecclestone to adjust the 2016 provisional calendar in order to restore a longer summer break and incorporate a factory shutdown.

In recent years the calendar has left a gap of three free weekends between the Hungarian and Belgian GPs. Built into that is a two-week complete factory shutdown, and the teams are free to choose when they take it within that time frame.

The shutdown, during which teams even have to switch off their computer servers, is intended mainly to allow both race and factory staff to have a summer holiday. However, it also allows teams to conduct annual maintanance and work at their facilties, including wind tunnels.

However in the 2016 calendar approved by the FIA World Motor Sport Council the break has been shrunk from three to two weekends. Adjusting it is complicated given that there are back-to-back races on either side of the break, with Germany/Hungary before it, and Belgium/Italy to follow. Some sources suggest that the Hockenheim race could yet drop out, which would allow Hungary to move – although given that advanced ticket sales for the German race start on Friday the race may be more secure than people think.

Team managers raised the issue of the shorter break with the FIA’s Charlie Whiting last weekend, and indicated that they don’t want to discuss ways of squeezing a factory shutdown into the shorter gap until the possibility of changing the calendar had been explored.

Later some team principals lobbied Bernie Ecclestone on the subject, making it clear to him that they now regard the shutdown as essential.

“I think the break is something that is important,” RBR boss Christian Horner told this writer. “F1 is such a demanding schedule for all people involved, not just technicians and people in the factory, but all the support staff, FOM, the media, and so on. It’s important to have that moment to catch your breath. So it’s something that has been raised with Bernie, and as we see sometimes the calendar does move around a bit before October.

“It’s nothing new in that the calendar does sometimes change a little, but obviously there’s a lot of races crammed into a shorter period. There’s usually a bit of fine tuning that goes on, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it did get tweaked a little bit.”

McLaren’s Eric Boullier agreed that the calendar could change: “We need to have a summer shutdown for the travelling people. We are discussing when we can do it and how long it will be. There are always some little tweaks to the calendar, so we should wait until later in the year.”

“From a Williams perspective the factory shutdown is important,” said Claire Williams. “The calendar is long and it’s arduous, and people put their blood, sweat and tears into going racing, and they sacrifice a lot to do that. Those two weeks, regardless of anything else, allows them time with their families, to have a bit of a normal life and a normal existence.

“To not have that is a concern. If I had I would have that conversation with Bernie I would put our arguments forward as to why it is important.”

Meanwhile Ecclestone himself says that that he does not anticipate any changes.

Bernie Ecclestone suspects that very little will get agreed in Thursday’s much anticipated F1 Strategy Group meeting, where rule changes both for the short term and for 2017 and beyond will be discussed.

Ecclestone controls six votes, the FIA has six, and Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Williams and Force India have one apiece. Ideas that gain support are then forwarded to the F1 Commission, where all the teams are represented.

“I think we will spend probably four or five hours in that meeting,” Ecclestone told this writer. “In the end we’ll probably decide the date of the next meeting. The problem with us at the moment is we’re a democracy. It’s no good.

“You know I don’t like democracies, because you’re never going to get a bunch of competitive people to agree. The ones that are winning at the moment don’t want to change, and if they start becoming losers, they want to change. That’s how it is. So we’ve got to get in a position where we can make a decision and say, ‘This is how it’s going to be…’”

Ecclestone is still keen to see the introduction of a much cheaper spec engine for budget conscious teams. A V8/KERS package is one option, and a twin-turbo V6/KERS another – with the latter using the same 100kgs of fuel per race rules as the current hybrids, which the bigger teams would continue to run.

“Let’s see what we can do,” he said. “Constructors are here for whatever the reason they think they should be here for, and I think they should continue doing that. I think then we can possibly have the other teams running maybe with a different type of engine that will be the same performance, but a lot less money. I’m saying we’ll leave everything as it is for the constructors. Don’t touch it.”

The complication is that the works teams will be loathe accept a ‘low budget’ engine of equal competitiveness to their own expensively developed power units. One obvious conclusion is that the threat of a cheap engine which has parity with the current hybrids is being used to force manufacturers to cut the prices they charge customer teams.

A budget engine which does not have parity would in effect create a Class B, and would not be attractive to the teams that might use it. However, Ecclestone says that it won’t make any difference if the cheaper engine did have less performance.

“The people that are running eighth today will be eighth. It’s not nice what I’m going to say, but it’s probably true. If you give some of those teams the current Mercedes car and engine they will still be in that position – or probably just a little bit better off.”

Meanwhile Ecclestone does not sound hopeful about the chances of the fifth engine idea being passed for this season: “We agreed, or all the teams agreed, to have five engines during the year. We’ve got four in the regulations, and now people are saying maybe it should stay four. People who supply the engines don’t want to supply more unless they get more money, the teams can’t afford it.”