• 2010 Season

Ecclestone repeats warning on new teams

Bernie Ecclestone still hold doubts over Campos and US F1 © Getty Images

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• Bernie Ecclestone

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• US F1

Bernie Ecclestone has again warned that he believes at least two of Formula One's new teams are not likely to make their debuts as scheduled in March.

After he made similar comments last month the US F1 and Campos entries insisted their campaigns were on track, but Ecclestone remains unconvinced. "Obviously when you speak to these people they say 'it's fine, there is no drama'. But I think there is drama. All we need is ten solid teams."

As a cost cutting measure, he said that he would not be opposed to the idea of smaller teams running just one customer car.

"I honestly believe that one or two of these new teams that are now coming in will be much better off running one car, which is supplied by any of the other teams," he said. "There's one small problem: finance. It's difficult for these teams, even with the budgets becoming more realistic, to raise that sort of money. You've probably heard about it, but we've got a bit of a financial crisis in the world, so there's not quite as many sponsors floating around as there were."

Ecclestone made bigger headlines late Wednesday with his controversial proposal to install "shortcuts" at each circuit that each driver can use five times a race.

"You wouldn't get stuck behind a slower car," he explained. "It would be great for TV. I've tried to push the teams on this because I don't think the efforts to increase overtaking are working, but they haven't gone for it."

But Lotus driver Jarno Trulli scoffed at such plans.

"I think Bernie sometimes has very clear ideas, but this [proposal] is just not possible in Formula One," Trulli told Reuters. "This is not a game, this is a sport."

He admitted that F1 needed to be more exciting for fans but urged Ecclestone to look to the North American stock car series NASCAR for inspiration.

"We need to find a way to make this sport more interesting," Trulli added. "To make it more spectacular we need to race wheel by wheel and cars have to be close to each other - those sorts of things. But we don't have to really invent new things. [NASCAR] has been very clever and very good in making sure that it keeps the rules very consistent over the years by not changing them too much, otherwise people at home will get confused."

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