Bernie Ecclestone Evil Genius…?
Bernie Ecclestone has recently been in the news talking about whom should succeed him as the commercial rights holder of Formula One. Many people feel that the sport should be controlled by the teams but Bernie feels this would be a mistake. He feels that F1 should be ruled with an iron fist and has made comments about his admiration of Adolf Hitler’s ability to ‘get things done’. This is not surprising for a guy who defended former head of the FIA Max Mosley for his Nazi bondage scandal.
Bernie who is turning 80 years old in a few days has been running F1 since the late 70s and has been part of the sport for much longer. He started out in F1 as the new team owner of the Brabham Team in 1972 and later gained control of the sport through his commercial deals for F1. Since he has been running the sport F1 has risen from a sport filled with privately funded teams racing in central Europe to a sport that has seen almost every major auto manufacturer involved at some point and races on almost every continent. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on who you ask but he has made himself a decent retirement fund in the process.
It seems as though by making F1 into this ‘must have’ commodity he has drifted away from what made the sport what it is. Since every country appears to want a race on the schedule the track fees have gotten to be so excessive that countries such as England, Turkey, Australia and Korea had to put in money to help pay the track fees for their respective races. These higher track fees have also resulted in higher ticket prices with race promoters looking to recoup money. Recently there has been a lot of funding for teams coming from oil families from the Middle East for such big name teams as Ferrari and Mclaren. This has led to tracks in places such as Abu Dhabi and Q’tar where there is no real atmosphere or fans to watch the races.
Bernie also seems to only rely on one person to create new tracks, Hermann Tilke. Tilke Design has been responsible for designing all of the latest tracks F1 uses such as Turkey, Abu Dhabi, Q’tar, Korea, Singapore and the newly proposed track in Houston, TX. All of the Tilke designed tracks are considered to lack character and result in boring high speed parades with the exception of Turkey with Eau Rouge corner. His tracks have none of the character that the older circuits have. There is not a single part of tracks such as Spa, Circuit Gil Villeneuve in Montreal, or Suzuka that are boring. These boring tracks combined with very expensive ticket prices have led to less fans at the track and in front of the TV. Bernie Ecclestone has definitely done great things for F1 but the next person in control may need to move away from some of his tactics and adapt to the changing motorsport economy before F1 becomes another expensive accessory for the super-rich and that is something that would sadden this F1 fan.
