BERNIE IN SPAT WITH NEW BOSS
FORMULA One’s rulers past and present were at each other’s throats last night, with Bernie Ecclestone and Chase Carey accusing the other of failing the sport.
The first grenade was thrown by Carey, who claimed Ecclestone left ‘an array’ of problems towards the end of his 40-year rule of the track.
Carey, a 62-year- old American with no Formula One experience before Liberty Media bought the world’s most popular series for £6billion in January, said: ‘Day to day I find a level of frustration.
‘It was very much a sport that got into a habit of saying “No” too much.
‘I want to be saying “Yes” to a whole lot more. What is the value of having an idea if the answer to everything you want to do is “No”? All that does is create frustration.
‘There is an array of things that weren’t done that needed to be done. We felt it was a sport that for the last five or six years had really not been managed to its full potential or taken advantage of what was here.’
Ecclestone, 86, who was made ‘chairman emeritus’ on being deposed by Liberty, put his tongue in cheek and told Sportsmail: ‘He’s probably dead right. If an idea was not going to make money or waste everyone’s time I did say “No”.
‘He’s not very specific, is he? I’d like him to say, “Bernie did this or that and it was stupid”.
‘I ran a company as chief executive that had to show a profit. If I ran it inefficiently Liberty probably wouldn’t have bought the shares. I had to make sure we could get the maximum financially we could for the company to make it interesting for somebody to buy, which is obviously what happened. It appears he doesn’t need to make money any more. But it’s good he has an opinion.
‘Maybe there are things I missed and maybe they will come up with things and hopefully it moves forward.’
The jury remains out on Liberty exactly 100 days into their reign. They have so far promised to work on ‘long-term value’ in contrast to what Carey called Ecclestone’s ‘short-term focus’ and ‘divide and conquer’ tactics.
Carey has also called for Formula One to work together in the future — an aspiration that has never endured in a sharp-toothed sport known as the ‘Piranha Club’.
Returning to Carey, Ecclestone cited the example of last weekend’s Russian Grand Prix and confusion over paddock entry, saying: ‘What has he done up to now?
‘He said he was going to open up the paddock, get more people in. And what he did was withdraw paddock passes from senior Russians in Sochi, apparently including President Putin.
‘He talks about the social media side, but I haven’t seen anything he’s done that has been beneficial to Formula One.’
Carey, whose representatives say the Russians ultimately received their passes, added: ‘Bernie took a business and sold it for eight billion dollars. He deserves all the credit in the world. But in today’s world you need to market a sport. We were not doing that.
‘When you have someone so identified with F1 for so long there is always going to be some degree of complexity. I will do what I think is right.’