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Bernie's mea culpa

Bernie Ecclestone's comments surprised many in the sport of F1 © Getty Images

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The F1 paddock was thrown into chaos today when Bernie Ecclestone told a group of selected journalists that he was partly to blame for Formula One's current state of crisis.

Much as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, no one inside the sport expected the 84-year-old to take such a pragmatic view on the effect the current division of spoils has had on F1's long-term prospects.

Ecclestone is no stranger to the big picture, or to long-term planning. It was his vision of the future potential of Formula One that turned him from team owner to the billionaire master of the sport that he is today, and there is nothing to suggest that the F1 supremo has lost his innate ability to look into the future and spot sources of profit.

But when the last round of agreements between the teams, the FIA, and the commercial rights holder were negotiated, Ecclestone had other things on his mind, namely the Munich trial which at that point loomed large in his future. While the benefit of hindsight has shown that Munich was only a temporary inconvenience, when the trial was an unknown quantity there was a limit to the need for Ecclestone to concern himself with F1's long-term prospects.

Now that Bernie is back, it is in his interests to ensure the longevity of Formula One, for a host of reasons. The bosses at CVC need to be reassured that their cash cow will keep producing milk, while Ecclestone himself does not want to run the risk of seeing the sport collapse under his watch, transforming his legacy from the man who grew F1 into a billion-dollar global brand to the man who killed it off.

Fixing F1's current mess will not be easy, as Ecclestone is the first to admit. "We have to decide the best way to sort this whole thing out," he said on Saturday in Austin. "Frankly, I know what's wrong but don't know how to fix it. No one is prepared to do anything about it because they can't. The regulations have tied us up. If we were in a position where we could help these teams in trouble, we would do it. But we are not allowed to. They say if you give this team $10,000, everyone has to have $10,000. The trouble with lots of regulations and lots of contracts is that we don't think long-term."

The 50-minute media session covered a host of topics, and Ecclestone was surprisingly open about his regrets.

"The problem is there is too much money probably being distributed badly - probably my fault," he acknowledged. "But, like lots of agreements people make, they seemed a good idea at the time. If the company belonged to me I would have done things in a different way because it would have been my money I was dealing with. I work for people who are in the business to make money.

"It makes no difference to me how the money is shared out. If they sat down here with me now and said they want to share out all of the money we get in a different way, I would say, 'Good, give me the bit of paper'. We have to open the eyes of those people in a position to turn the lights on and off to what they need to do because I wouldn't want to be in a position where I was too strong and Formula One disappears and someone says it is because of you it disappeared."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

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