New F1 owners ‘would keep Ecclestone in charge’

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Bernie Ecclestone would remain in charge of Formula One if current co-owners CVC sell their stake to a consortium headed by RSE Ventures and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.

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47 comments on “New F1 owners ‘would keep Ecclestone in charge’”

  1. Literally my reaction to that headline:
    https://youtu.be/N493CQgQ_Hk

    1. haha! way too funny!

    2. I swear to God, this man is a damn cockroach! In a hundred years when we’ve been wiped out by a nuclear apocalypse, I’m sure he’ll still be running F1.

      1. And Keith Richards and Mick Jagger will be still rollin’

    3. +1

      mine as pretty similar too… http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

    4. I would rather Michael Scott running F1 than Bernie Ickystones. Maybe we could finally call it F!. (Surely I’m not the only person to type that…)

  2. Why would they be so stupid to keep bernie. He has done more damage than good these last few years. He gave redbull and Ferrari huge payouts while the smaller teams get shafted. then throw in his crapy pirelli tires that he wanted and that he actually thinks they do a good job

    1. Texasisbiggerthanfrance (@texasisbiggerthanfrance)
      1st March 2016, 0:27

      Probably because they think there’s nobody more experienced that can do a better job than Mr.E does ?

      Running an ordinary business is tough enough. F1 with all its worldly complexities is no joke. Bernie is an excellent chief whipmaster as well as an executive.

      1. @texasisbiggerthanfrance Bernie is the lynchpin at the moment because he has purposely tied the sports management in knots, which him the sole holder of the scissors.

        A lot of the sports issues can be solved by removing him from the equation and tearing up the existing contracts for the good of the sport.

        1. Texasisbiggerthanfrance (@texasisbiggerthanfrance)
          1st March 2016, 0:34

          You may be right but who’s the man for the job if Bernie goes ? Nobody. F1 is Bernie’s brainchild and he’s been at the helm since its inception. You can’t just get a new guy to replace him, it’d be like how Apple kicked out Steve Jobs. Bernie and F1 are way too intertwine, in a good and bad way.

          1. F1 existed, and was successful long before Bernie was at the helm, and only a cynic would think that no one else could do the job. Perhaps, it doesn’t need to be one person to replace him…

          2. You can’t just get a new guy to replace him, it’d be like how Apple kicked out Steve Jobs.

            At least Steve was quite better than Bernie..

          3. @texasisbiggerthanfrance

            You can’t just get a new guy to replace him, it’d be like how Apple kicked out Steve Jobs.

            What a terrible analogy, given that Steve Jobs has since passed away and since then, the company has expanded and grown to be one of the largest & most successful in the world?

            F1 could stand to grow massively *without* a huge technical revolution if the commercial rights holder invested in the sport rather than take money out of it.

          4. @tim-m More like how MS kicked out Ballmer?

          5. Peppermint-Lemon (@)
            1st March 2016, 12:45

            Lol why do you use Apple as an analogy for everything you comment on? Steve Jobs was a pill popping, lsd tripping angry hippy who was a bit of a visionary in the beginning, but had to be “saved” by Microsoft when they gave Apple loads of money in the 90s. to keep them going. Apple didnt kick out Steve Jobs, he was sadly very ill, then passed away.

            Apple are on a slow by steady decline in many ways, but the general populous do not see this (choose not to see this?) but the bosses do, wheras F1 is on a steady decline and the general populoud co see this, but the bosses do not.

          6. @peppermint-lemon

            With respect, you don’t seem to be at all familiar with the Apple story.

            Steve Jobs was indeed ‘kicked out’ by his own company, by his own board, and went off to set up NeXT. He was subsequently several years later asked by Apple to come back and be their CEO. He did so and turned Apple into the most profitable company in history.

            ‘A bit of a visionary in the beginning’ is a hilariously dismissive report on a man responsible for effectively reinventing the computer, music and telecommunication industries.

          7. @davidnotcoulthard Interesting parallel with the Ballmer angle.

          8. @peppermint-lemon

            but had to be “saved” by Microsoft when they gave Apple loads of money in the 90s.

            Which I think really hasn’t got that much to do with how visionary he was.

            In some ways I don’t rate him as that much of a visionary (just a brilliant, or lucky, perhaps both, profit maker – not something that always takes visionary-ness) – for example many PDAs came before iPhones and I’ve seen and used a certain Transmeta Crusoe Compaq tablet older than the iPad (rubbish in the 2010’s – though probably less so in 2001).

            But I think there’s not as much of a connection between how undeserving of respect one is, how visionary one is, and how good one is at turning up profit as your comment seems to say you think.

          9. @tim-m Wait a second, I was supposed to tag @texasisbiggerthanfrance in my comment up there….

            it’d be like how Apple kicked out Steve Jobs.

            More like how MS kicked out Ballmer?

          10. @paulguitar

            ‘A bit of a visionary in the beginning’ is a hilariously dismissive report on a man responsible for effectively reinventing the computer, music and telecommunication industries.

            I don’t think it was through technological inventions though, in case that’s what you were getting at.

            It was not seldom through the first commercially successful implementation of whatever tech changed the whatever world.

            commercially, and down to the consumer (non-business) level – the earlier-than-Apple successful implementations (of the not-so-dumb phone and tablet, at least) were successful….but not commercially (at least in comparison to the iPad and iPhone).

        2. The new owners wont give a hoot about the sport… Bernie keeps F1 brand secure, thats all.

          1. What, like how the current owners care about the sport? They only care as long as petro-money and regime’s keep paying their absurd hosting fees.

    2. The way things are in F1, I’d always claim to want to keep Bernie until the deal is well and trul done, at least.

      More so if I wanted to get rid of him, and especially since @optimaximal is quite right about the knotting. Otherwise, I am sure the deal would somehow collapse!

      1. Good point @bosyber. Bernie is not the man to let a deal that would mean his end in F1 go through

  3. McLaren:
    “We are still not at the performance level of Mercedes and Ferrari, so there is still a lot of work to do.”
    “But we are making big improvements and making massive progress. And there will be massive progress this year.”
    “McLaren is all about winning, so if we are not winning then we are failing.”
    All this translates into:
    The current people at McLaren are making it a joke :(

  4. You need to read around the headline.

    Any prospective buyer knows that Bernie will do & say pretty much anything to maintain his grip on management of the sport – it’s all he’s really got these days, given his advanced years, wastrel children and a string of expensive divorces – and if they show signs of wanting him out, he’ll simply throw a grenade in the works.

    Best sugar coat things and drag him along, but then once the deal is done, appoint a strong figurehead and ease him out to pasture.

    He’s thrown soundbites such as ‘if VW want me to go, I’ll go’ before – hopefully one day someone with some balls will call him out.

    1. Exactly, if you want the deal to go through, say you will keep Bernie. For now..

  5. Bernie…go home! you are the cancer of motorsport…

  6. Is the buyout article from Oct 2015? Thats only one i can find.

  7. How would Mercedes go about creating a ‘performance special’ engine?

    Interested in:
    a) the engineering/geek side of what they could actually do
    b) how they would do this in the current engine freeze environment without spending tokens

    1. That’s actually a very interesting question, unless they feel their engine is extremely reliable and superior, that they can spend their allocated season tokens on one ultra superior package. Arrogance? I don’t know, but it does show me that these current engines probably have a lot of growing up to do and their is still massive performance to be gained and not the often proposed diminishing returns people expect.
      It does somewhat frustrate me, having these token limit, because it basically means the order will never be reversed or conversely, when a Ferrari gains 2% performance, Mercedes use the same tokens to gain 2%. Teams should be allowed to design to the best of their abilities and not limit teams to a token system that basically guarantees that if you started off weaker in 2013, you will remain weake and confined for 5-6 years.

      1. Teams should be allowed to design to the best of their abilities

        The problem you then end up with is someone has to pay for it. Engine manufacturers charge their customer teams (even though that’s now capped) and if they still don’t win or make money, they leave in a cloud.

        If there’s restricted development, they’re less likely to blindly spend themselves into a hole, so they just look like bad losers, which is bad PR.

        Anyway, it’s academic – the tokens are being abolished. They’re only keeping the engine limit penalties to prevent everyone doing what Honda predictably did last year.

    2. @fletchuk, they probably wouldn’t necessarily change that much in terms of the mechanical components – they would probably just run the engine and the energy recovery systems in a much more aggressive power setting than normal, trading the normal component lifespan for increased performance over a handful of races.

      Even in the past, when teams would sometimes bring in special engines (like Ferrari’s Monza specials or Honda’s Suzuka specials), mechanically the engines weren’t that different to the standard unit. They might make a few components a little more lightweight or allow the engines to rev a little higher than normal, but they weren’t radically different – it was more a case of creating a marketing message for the home crowd to enjoy.

  8. On this day in F1

    Williams led the final pre-season test of 2015 on this day last year:

    Bottas leads final test as Maldonado crashes

    Miss him already!

  9. Better than CVC owning F1 for any longer…

  10. Till death do us part?

    1. Till death do us part! So it seems… and that particular event can’t come soon enough for me. Bernie’s style may be the reason why F1 has gained it’s exposure, but I would argue against the entertainment model and for the sporting model. F1 is big enough that if it truly became a sporting activity, with transparency and universal standards for all participants, then I reckon it could survive the transition from Entertainment relatively intact. Of course there are many business people capable of filling Bernie Ickystone’s shoes, and many of them of sound ethical standing. Bernie has been too close to power for too long. Corruption is a logical consequence. As a fan of F1 for 30 years I have watched it through many changes. Bernie’s passing will surely be the dawn of a fine new age. It is time for the establishment to step down in order to save their creation. Anything else is utter nihilism.

      1. @ferrox-glideh – Well, I honestly do not wish for Bernie to die, but it sure seems at times that his control over F1 will have to be pried from his cold, dead hands at some point. The way he has interwoven the financial control and his decision making control over the most key facets of F1 has made it nearly impossible for anyone else to take over unless he gives up control voluntarily, or dies. It would be great to see a strong willed person take over, care about the sport, delegate responsibilities and run it like a real sporting business with a commitment to the fans who ultimately pay the bills. We all have dreams. ;-)

  11. Change the record Mclaren!

  12. I can’t pretend to know anything about RSE Ventures or Stephen Ross, and just reading the word consortium conjures up an image of nothing changing vs CVC, but that doesn’t mean anything really. This group might recognize the issues and genuinely want to change them, and give BE the mandate to do so, if it must be BE behind the wheel.

  13. I’ve been waiting for someone to explain how they’d make the cars faster, lower, wider, and heavier… without changing the fuel allocation, or adding refueling.

    The same people who are dead set against refueling, also want the drivers to be able to race flat out, and want the cars lighter and faster, and easier on their tires.

    Weight is the enemy to all those things, and the fuel is a massive chunk of that weight. Every 10kg slows the car by 0.3 seconds a lap (give or take). The 2017 rules are already adding 0.6 seconds (raising minimum weight by 20kg).

  14. I genuinely believe that Bernie knows that errors have been made during his management of the sport. I think that he should have moved aside or been moved aside at the turn of the century and that he has been trying to atone for these errors in the only way he knows: by making his bosses/partners mega money. His legacy will be one of a great man who stayed in office well beyond his time and tragically if he had left 15 or so years ago he would probably have been forgiven by now. He has tried to give the fans the ‘answer’ time and again by introducing Pirellis etc but fundamentally failed as the sport slips deeper into financial ruin for both the fans and any team that is not backed by a manufacturer. For me, there is no progress as long as Bernie is around. He will be replaced by a consortium but they should be chosen based on ability rather than for economic reasons. I would like there to be a triumvirate at the top, someone who speaks for the teams, drivers and circuits, someone to deal with marketing and online presence and someone who is in control of the sport’s finances. The fact that a whole sport is being run by one man is as ridiculous as it is impressive. The fact that that man is in his eighties, even more so. If the FIFA scandal proves one thing, it’s that a monopoly at the head of the sport is liable to corruption internally. The reason that we have not seen one in F1 is because a big scandal comes about on a weekly basis and is justified purely by potential profits long term. It’s a dog eat dog world for everyone below Bernie, perhaps he should be made so see how it feels sooner or later.

    1. You are SO correct.

  15. Well… The value of F1 and FOM is insane.

    8.5B for binding contracts with teams for 4 years to compete, and a host of TV rights and contracts with venues around the.

    I bet serius coorporations like Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault (not based on order of seriusness) would be able to organise a way more serius competition, with better racing and faster cars and better fan access.

    But Bernie has noncompete clauses on all of them. That is the true value FOM has. Apparently that is worth 8.5B. Bernie is a world class manipulator of teams. Thats it, he cannot even understand his product, or fanbase. But he does understand how to divide and conquer.

    He does it well, so new owners want to keep him in place. Who else would teams pay 30% revenue for administrative duties…

  16. Better late than never… and judging by his red eyes, it looks like Nico was up late celebrating!

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