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Tue
Jul 14 2009

Ecclestone is going nowhere

Alan Henry
Of all the big beasts in the F1 jungle, Bernie is the most formidable of all. So it came as absolutely no surprise at all at the Nurburgring over the weekend that he roundly dismissed media speculation that he might be ‘pushed upstairs’ into a background role within the administration of F1 in the wake of his recent unfortunate remarks concerning Adolf Hitler.

In fact, far from being sidelined the 78-year old billionaire powerbroker says he is set to “sort out” the sport’s current problems which all stem, at least in large part, from the need for the world championship to generate sufficient interest to service the $2.8bn (£1.7bn) bond which was launched in 2007 by investors CVC Capital Partners to buy a stake in Ecclestone’s F1 business.



Ecclestone said he hoped that agreement could be reached on a long-term deal which would secure the future of the sport by the middle of this week.

“Any story suggesting I am going anywhere is completely untrue,” he told autosport.com. “I hope to have a (new) Concorde agreement in place by Wednesday. Max (Mosley, the FIA president) will be happy when we have it sorted. He will have achieved everything he set out to achieve, including a new agreement on cost cutting.

“He will then be in a position to do what he said he would do and stand down. But for me, I’ll be around for the future.”

Ecclestone’s sentiments were supported by Donald MacKenzie, the managing partner of CVC, who spent much of the race weekend playing the role of honest broker with Ecclestone, the sport’s governing body, and the Formula One teams’ association. Balancing their various interests has not always been a straightforward task, to put it mildly. But at the end of the day, love him or loathe him, Bernie is the glue without which the F1 business would quickly come badly unstuck.

“There is no question of him moving to an honorary position, or upstairs,” he said. “There has never been any doubt about that.  Bernie knows me well enough to know that his position is not under threat. He runs the business and does so very well.”

Mackenzie spent much of the German grand prix weekend attempting to smooth the passage of an agreement for the new Concorde agreement between CVC, the teams’ association FOTA and the sport’s governing body. Meanwhile the teams are keeping their fingers firmly crossed that a level playing field can be established for 2010.

In particular they are trying to  coax the FIA into altering its insistence that the three incoming new teams are not forced to use Cosworth engines running to a higher rev limit than all the other engines on the grid. That would create a two-tier Formula One and would not be accepted by FOTA under any circumstances. And then we would be right back at the start of the problem again.

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About Alan Henry

Our F1 expert has been covering the sport since Lewis Hamilton's father was a teenager (do the maths yourselves on that one), and writing for Autocar since 1994.

Comments

Chunkster July 14, 2009 10:12 AM

Ecclestone will do what he does best. Offer the teams more money to get them to sign a new Concord Agreement like he did a few years ago when Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan tried to muscle in on Bernie's territory after they got hold of Kirch's stake.

The only surprise so far is Bernie and Max have been unable to get Ferrari to switch sides from the FOTA alliance. Maybe Senor LDM has had enough of Bernie and Max too........................I have always looked forward to LDM being the FOTA Chairman.

By the end of the week, all the monies owed to FOTA teams from previous years will be paid and all teams will get a bigger share of the TV rights revenue. Max will be given a graceful exit and the customary eulogy.

It will be like all this never happened.

Peter Cavellini July 14, 2009 2:26 PM

Yes, he's like a bad smell, and nobody knows how to deal with or is brave enough too do the dirty deed!  

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