Bernie Ecclestone arrived in the F1 paddock at 2pm this afternoon and is set to meet with the F1 teams after the ninety minute practice session to discuss the SKY/BBC F1 broadcast deal which was announced this morning. Both Ecclestone and the teams have made it clear in the past that F1 must remain on Free to air TV and yet the Sky part of the deal, where they will broadcast all 20 F1 races and practice sessions live, would seem to contradict that. I’ve spoken to FOTA chairman Martin Whitmarsh in the last hour and he says that the More…

F1′s commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone has admitted paying £27 million to a former colleague but says it was not a bribe. THe 80 year old said that he has done nothing wrong and will clear his name, as prosecutors in Germany allege that he paid bribes of $44 million (£27 Mill) to Gerhard Gribkowsky, who was once the lead banker responsible for the 2006 sale of the sport to current owners CVC. Prosecutors further allege that Mr Ecclestone received $41.4m (£25.4m) in commissions from the bank, as well as a large payment to Bambino Holdings, the family trust. The prosecutor More…

On Wednesday I went to the headquarters of Formula One Management at Princes Gate to interview Bernie Ecclestone for Australian Network 10 Television. We spoke of many things and I put to him some of the questions I’ve heard from fans – not least at the recent FOTA Fans Forum events we organsised – to do with F1′s reluctance to expand into social media and where the balance lies between entertainment and sport. * Sebastian Vettel’s current domination of F1 * The balance between entertainment and sport * His sparring match with Jean Todt * His attitude to F1 content More…

We had an interesting, if not entirely intentional, debate here on JA on F1 over the weekend about women drivers in F1 and today F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone has given an interview to the official F1 website in which he says that he envisages that Formula 1 could have a female CEO, “probably in three to five years” from now. He builds up to this by saying that, “I am sure that not so long from now 50 percent of the decision makers in the economy and politics will be women. Women have always had a strong influence, and have More…

F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone is reported to have bought out Flavio Briatore’s stake in Queens Park Rangers football club which gives him a majority stake of 62%. The flamboyant Briatore, who got Ecclestone into football in the first place, stepped down as chairman of the club in February. “We’re not changing anything, just tidying a few things up,” Ecclestone told Reuters. “We need to be ready in case we get promoted.” Ecclestone got involved in QPR in 2007 along with Briatore and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who remains a significant shareholder. The club is based in London, near the More…

Back in the 1990s Benetton ran a series of shock adverts, devised by photographer Oliviero Toscani, which helped to define and promote the brand very quickly. They were selling sweaters, but their posters showed a man dying of Aids, a death row prisoner, a nun kissing a priest. Now F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who was close to Benetton’s Flavio Briatore throughout those years, has revived the practice with an ad for the Hublot F1 King Power watch, the first official F1 watch. It’s an amazing play; Hublot is a premium brand, with watches retailing for tens of thousands of pounds More…

There is an entertaining interview with F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone on his own F1.com site today. It’s a wide ranging discussion, the occasion being his 80th birthday next Thursday (28th October). It’s quite autobiographical, revealing some interesting details, such as his luck as a child not to be killed when a German warplane crashed near him, blowing him 20 metres, but leaving him unscathed. The discussion keeps coming back to the subject of luck, Ecclestone insisting that he was very lucky in his life to have been presented with many great opportunities – he just had the wisdom and More…

I’ve spent the first part of Friday hosting the Business of Motorsport in Asia conference at the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) – a high octane gathering of Asian business leaders who were there to hear from speakers including Bernie Ecclestone, Tony Fernandes, McLaren’s Ekrem Sami, and the marketing supremos of Shell, LG and Diageo. The event was organised by SGX together with sponsorship agency JMI and it was attended by almost 200 delegates. It was widely agreed that Singapore has performed miracles to establish itself as one of the most important events on the F1 calendar, equal with Monaco. This More…

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone is fronting a powerful European consortium making a late surge to buy troubled Swedish car company, Saab. His partners in the consortium are Renault F1 owner Gerard Lopez, via his Geniii Capital vehicle and Swedish real estate entrepreneur Lars Carlstrom. Saab is currently owned by General Motors and is loss making. Ironically for a man who is suspicious of the internet, Ecclestone’s bid is based on the latest thing in automotive innovation – internet in cars. On its website this afternoon, Genii Capital said that it had been brought into the bidding process at a late More…

Bernie Ecclestone has said in the last few days that he thinks that the penalty meted out to Flavio Briatore by the FIA World Motor Sport Council was too harsh. Ecclestone is a member of the WMSC himself and has a personal interest because Briatore is a close friend and business associate with whom Ecclestone spends his evenings at race meetings. Now, it seems their relationship is broken. Speaking at an LG press conference in Singapore today he said, “He’s not talking to me, I don’t know. He thinks I should have defended him, which I couldn’t.” But beyond that, More…

Formula 1 commercial right holder Bernie Ecclestone has said that he fears the Renault board may decide to quit Formula 1 following allegations that Nelson Piquet was asked to crash his car so that his team mate Fernando Alonso could win last year’s Singapore Grand Prix. With car sales well down for all the manufacturers in Formula 1, this is a delicate moment in their participation in the sport anyway. Renault recently announced heavy losses and Toyota is expecting to lose up to $8 billion this year. The feeling in the Spa paddock before the bombshell about the Singapore enquiry More…

As we get ready to head for Budapest, the Concorde Agreement is due to be signed, which should bring in a new co-operation between the teams, the commercial rights holders and the FIA. I noted some comments yesterday by Mario Theissen, the team principal of BMW Sauber, about the need for the teams to have more say over the venues visited by the Formula 1 circus. I’ve heard these sentiments expressed many times before, but it will be interesting to see what traction they get this time around. Presently there is no race in North America, the largest market for More…

Bernie Ecclestone’s interview in the Times last weekend has brought a furious response from politicians and virtual silence from the F1 community. Most people in F1 don’t really want to get drawn into it, as they argue he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be in the first place. What most people don’t understand is why he did the interview. He didn’t appear to have a key message to sell, such as “I know the breakaway threat looked bad, but F1 is now in the best shape it’s ever been in, ” or something of that kind. There are suggestions that More…

Interesting tale in the News of the World today, where Ian Gordon has managed to get an exclusive with Bernie Ecclestone on how the Honda management team turned down his offer of financial help with their buyout of the team. Bernie has done a series of ‘exclusives’ lately; with the FT, the Telegraph, the Express and now the NoW. The Times has been his channel of choice for years, but he now seems to be spreading it around a bit more. This story is interesting because in it Bernie reveals that he proposed putting up some of the money to More…