f1buzz.net » What’s Bernie said now?

Bernie: Senna’s death good for F1

David — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:26:03 +0000

When people get older they tend to say whatever comes to mind without passing it through the common sense filters that most of us have.

Take the Duke of Edinburgh, for example. Here’s a man who asked a native Kenyan woman who presented him with a gift: “You are a woman, aren’t you?”

HRH may have a long and distinguished history of gaffes but Bernie Ecclestone is rapidly catching him up. The trouble with Bernie is that while the Duke’s comments are frequently hilarious — “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?” (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands), Bernie’s are usually in poor taste — and not in a funny way.

The latest glimpse into the bizarre world that Bernie inhabits is his comment that the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994 was “good for F1.” This was given in an interview with Brazilian paper Folha de S.Paulo:

It was unfortunate. But the publicity generated was so much… It was good for F1. It’s a shame we lost Ayrton. He was popular, but many people became interested in F1 because of the publicity generated by his death.

Putting aside the wisdom of declaring this in a Brazilian paper, I can’t believe Bernie could say such a thing.

If anything positive came from Senna’s tragic death it was that safety has now been improved so much that Felipe Massa can be hit in the face with a piece of suspension and be back in a car a few of months later but to declare it a good thing?

Maybe something was lost in translation but Bernie has sunk to a new low with this one.

Image: Williams F1

That’s not cheating. It’s pushing the technical requirements!

David — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:36:25 +0000

The Official Formula 1 Website has an interview with Niki Lauda and Bernie Ecclestone where they talk about Flavio Briatore and the Renault race fixing scandal and reminisce about the good old days.

Back in the 70′s you didn’t cheat by purposely crashing into a wall. No, you cheated by building an obviously illegal car with a whopping great suction fan on the back, winning one race and then withdrawing it before it could be declared illegal:

Q: How were the two of you working together in the years 1978 and 1979?
NL: We cheated together!
BE: Never!
NL: We did. Remember the Swedish Grand Prix in 1978 when we were running the car with the ventilator [the famous Brabham BT46B ‘fan’ car]. I won with that car.
BE: Stop. That was not cheating. It was pushing the technical requirements to the limit. You were able to keep that victory. Later on they banned the ventilator. It was much too good for the time.
NL: True. At that time I was a bit stupid. All practice and qualifying I had to drive with a 200-litre fuel load, while all the others where low on fuel. I was fuming. I only made it to P12 on the grid. In the course of the race I knew why: so nobody would guess how fast the car really was – otherwise they would have banned it before the start.
BE: Thanks Mr Lauda. People from other teams came to our pits for a little spying, so I said to (Brabham team manager) Herbie Blash very audibly, ‘De-fuel the car’. So they all were putting their minds at rest when they saw our meagre qualifying time. They had no idea that we didn’t de-fuel the car.

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Bernie: Hitler got things done

David — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:59:28 +0000

It’s been a while but I knew that it was impossible for Bernie to go more than a couple of months without saying something completely outrageous. And boy was it worth the wait.

He’s called Ferrari idiots, he’s insulted black, Jewish women drivers and now he’s expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

In his latest interview in the Times, Bernie suggests that perhaps Adolf Hitler was misunderstood; he didn’t really want to dominate Europe and exterminate the Jews. He just wanted to get things done.

A bit like an über-David Allen:

In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.

He also thinks the Iraq war was a bad idea:

We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taleban].

Bernie: Ferrari are idiots

David — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:03:03 +0000

Last week Bernie Ecclestone was calling Ferrari and Formula One “a marriage made in heaven, one of those super things that work well”. This was after Max Mosley’s suggestion that if Ferrari didn’t like his new rules they could sod off.

We know that Ferrari are Bernie’s favourite team but considering his recent divorce from former model wife, Slavica (possibly costing him £1 billion), I’m not sure he’s someone I’d want to be taking marriage advice from.

Tomorrow, Ferrari go before the French courts to seek an injunction preventing the introduction of the new rules. They are relying on a secret deal made in 2005 between Ferrari and the FIA that gives the Scuderia veto power over any new regulations. A deal that Max Mosley doesn’t seem to think is valid anymore.

Legal action. Shady deals. Threatened boycotts. What ever happened to racing?

Luckily we have Bernie to lighten the mood. Speaking to The Times, when asked about the court action, Ecclestone said:

It’s good, it keeps it in the bloody newspaper. They should have done it before – idiots.

Bernie explains the cost cap

David — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:54:28 +0000

Last week, the FIA announced plans to introduce a budget cap of £40m in 2010.

The teams are split as to whether this is good idea or not and whether it could result in a two-tier Championship.

Smaller teams like Brawn GP are likely to benefit from such an arrangement but Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo wasn’t pleased and wrote a stern letter to FIA president Max Mosely outlining his concerns.

This prompted a reply from Mosely suggesting that Formula One could do just fine without Ferrari and if they don’t like the rules then they don’t have to play.

In the middle of these rising tensions Bernie Ecclestone provided some elucidation in the Times saying of Mosley:

The trouble with Max is he’s not capable, like in the past, of wrapping things up nicely with a pink ribbon and things. He wants to put it in an old cardboard box and tie it with string.

and of di Montezemolo:

The trouble with Luca is that you shouldn’t let Max ever be in a position where he can start a debate or an argument. He’s reasonably clever and you won’t win. Even if you do win, it’s like you being in the audience and me being there with the microphone. You say something smart and I don’t give you the microphone — it’s as easy as that.

finally wrapping things up with:

It would appear that everyone is in favour of the cap, including Ferrari, if we can get them to agree, which we can.

Right. So no problems there, then!

Bernie: F1 needs women drivers

David — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:09:04 +0000

Formula One has a two week break between the Bahrain Grand Prix at the end of April and the Spanish Grand Prix to be held in Barcelona next Sunday.

This has allowed plenty of time for Bernie Ecclestone to be let loose on the press and produce a couple of choice quotes.

According to the Guardian, at a dinner for local Spanish motor sport journalists, Bernie said that he would like Formula One to be “surrounded by controversy all the time.”

Obviously disappointed the whole McLaren controversy was dealt with so quickly, he decided it was time to give his enlightened views about the future of the sport:

Personally I don’t really mind who comes in, but if I had a choice I think that formula one needs a black, Jewish woman who, if possible, wins some races too.

This comes after he compared the signing of a new Concorde agreement to the Arab/Israeli conflict:

It’s like Israel and the Palestinians — always about to reach an agreement but never quite signing it.

FOTA schmota

David — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:59:44 +0000

From James Allen’s Twitter feed:

Bernie – “I’m not fighting anyone.”

Journo – “What about FOTA?”

Bernie – “Who?”

(Tip o hat to Andrew.)

McLaren and Renault threatened boycott

David — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:37:32 +0000

The Times is reporting that in a meeting between Renault team principal Flavio Briatore, McLaren chairman and CEO Ron Dennis, Toyota team principal and FOTA vice-president John Howett and Bernie Ecclestone, Dennis and Briatore threatened to boycott the Australian Grand Prix.

They allegedly told Ecclestone that unless he wrote them a check they wouldn’t put their cars on the specially chartered flights to Australia last Sunday and neither would the rest of FOTA. The money in question is in payment for signing a new Concorde Agreement, something the teams are yet to do.

According to Ecclestone:

Flavio said, ‘we’re not going to put our cars on the plane, we’re not going to Melbourne.’ He – Flavio – started it, aided and abetted by Ron Dennis.

Unfazed, Bernie decided to called their bluff:

I picked up the phone to our people that handle all the freight to ask them to cancel the aeroplanes. They were saying, ‘all the Fota-schmota are not going – nobody’s going to go.’ So I said what I’d better do is cancel the aircraft obviously. It costs a fortune to charter those things and almost as much to cancel them.

All the cars are now in Melbourne so the threat obviously wasn’t carried out. The first race hasn’t even been run but we may already have the Bernie quote of the season:

If they come in here with a gun and hold it to my head, they had better be sure they can fucking pull the trigger. And they should make sure it’s got bullets in it because, if they miss, they better look out.

The tensions between FOTA and the FIA/Ecclestone has undertones of the FISA-FOCA war of the 80′s. Back then, Bernie Ecclestone as Brabham team owner and Max Mosley as his legal advisor were on the other side of the conflict that culiminated in a boycott of the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix. Among the complaints of the FOCA teams were FISA’s handling of regulations and financial compensation.

Sounds familiar…

Bernie backs Button

David — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:06:51 +0000

Bernie Ecclestone thinks the new scoring system announced by the FIA on Tuesday could give Jenson Button a crack at the Championship in 2009.

Official Aussie bookmaker, IASbet.com currently has Jenson Button priced as favourite to win in Melbourne ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello and Lewis Hamilton.

When Bernie was asked by Autosport about his predictions for the championship at an Australian Grand Prix press conference he said:

I suppose an awful lot will depend on these regulations, but if Brawn has got it right, then there is a chance that for the first three races we could maybe see Jenson winning.

Now that it is not points that decides the championship, if he has three races in his pocket then it is not bad – although I suppose in the end you have to look at the old timers like Alonso, Kimi, Felipe and Mr Hamilton.

I think he’s right and I’d love to see Jenson challenging for the Championship this year. God knows he’s been waiting a long time for a car that could give him a serious chance at it. But my favorite Bernie comment from the press conference was this, when asked about the legality of the Williams, Toyota and Brawn diffusers:

I guarantee whoever wins the races in Melbourne will be told they are cheating, and it doesn’t matter who it is.

Unfortunately, I think he’s right there, too.

Bernie would only miss Ferrari

David — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:43:40 +0000

In an interview with the Financial Times, Bernie Ecclestone has said that the only team he would really be sorry see to go is Ferrari.

He had previously said that Honda’s recent exit from Formula One was “no great loss” but these latest comments will do little to quell suspicions that Ferrari receive favourable treatment by the sport’s administrators.

Ferrari is the only team to have been in F1 since the inaugural Championship season in 1950 and Ecclestone has previously admitted that Ferrari receive more money than the other teams.

Ecclestone told the FT:

It’s bad for me to say this, but the only team we would really say we would miss is Ferrari.