Eclestton admit ‘frustration’ and ‘guilt’

Bernie Ecclestone admits that the current issues in F1 stems from the distribution of funds which he says is “probably my fault”.

Asked if there was anger and frustration at the situation, Ecclestone replied: “Absolutely. The problem is there is too much money probably being distributed badly – probably my fault. But like lots of agreements people make, they seemed a good idea at the time.”

And Ecclestone believes he and the teams “should tear all of the current contracts up. Tear them all up, start again.”

With Fernley saying a boycott of the United States Grand Prix was a genuine possibility on Saturday, Ecclestone said there is no chance of a team pulling out of the race.

“Forget all that crap. I promise they will be racing. They will be racing, I give you a guarantee – but I worry if they will be racing next year.”

While Ecclestone is keen to make changes, he says it will be difficult as a result of the complexity of regulations at present because unanimous agreement is required on many matters.

“We have to decide the best way to sort this whole thing out. 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. 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’.”