F1 commercial rights

#F1 Daily News and Comment: Saturday 21st March 2015

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A Daily Round up of Formula One news, inside whispers, opinion and comment. Today, OTD Lite 1982 – British teams cheat better Kvyat’s failure Red Bull’s fault Alonso’s accident proves costly Red Bull cannot leave F1 I should have had one of the Schumacher titles – Barrichello OTD Lite 1982 – British teams cheat better … Read more

Wolff wishes to clear the air, Big Foot or The Hulk, Pirelli reveals tyres for 1st 4 races, Ecclestone and the ‘appearing’ evidence

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Toto Wolff sets matters straight

In an interview for Formula1.com Toto Wolff talks about expectations at Mercedes.

“As they (Mercedes) know I have put my neck on the line they know that I have no room for failure. Not only have I taken a personal risk by leaving Williams – where I have enjoyed working – but there is also a financial and economic side to it. There is a huge amount of trust on both sides and I am very happy having joined.”

I’m not really sure what Toto is inferring here, “You cannot run a Formula 1 operation in the UK out of Germany. It is not only a difference in mentality – there is definitely a difference (laughs) – but it is also about physically being there.

Running a company from a distance never really works, so the question is either you run it full time or you don’t. And if you don’t, then you rely on management. In the past I have done that, but it was not the role Mercedes had envisioned for me.”

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Lewis keeps Mercedes in F1

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Now the dust is settling following the Hamilton announcement, there are a number of threads to tidy up, but we’ll start with some housekeeping.

Firstly, forgive me for some of the Tabloid headlines which are presently being used and are designed to attract attention, but we are a new blog and it is a good way of grabbing readers who have not heard of us. I will get to the headline of this article shortly.

Also, there has been a certain amount of cynicism over whether we do in fact have access to ‘inside’ information at times, but this is not actually that important except from the fact it is helpful when trying to work out what will be the next talking point.

More fundamental to the articles being written is that we’re trying to address the issues and the questions the headline writers and mainstream F1 travelling media circus miss by chasing the breaking news.

This will hopefully mean that we will call things before the headline writers do. Feathers in the cap so far, Jake Humphrey leaving the BBC a week before it was announced. Further, today a number of high profile media commentators who travel with the F1 circus have now begun looking at why Lewis has actually left McLaren.

One example is Martin Brundle who said on the F1 show on Sky TV that if McLaren had really wanted to keep Lewis they could have done quite a lot more. Without using the word “pushed” he acknowledged McLaren had been feeling the need to move on from Lewis as much as Lewis did from McLaren. Others you will have seen have been saying similar things in reflection a day after the big announcement.

So that’s 2 strong predictions in the first 2 weeks of the blog – not too bad – but a weekly statistic that will be impossible to live up to I suspect.

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German Indictments imminent for Ecclestone

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Today Suddeutsche.de reports the following.

The German Bank – Bayern LB – that once held the commercial rights to F1 and paid Bernie Ecclestone 41million Euro’s in commission to find a buyer – is looking to recover its money.

We now know this money actually just circulated on to Gerhard Gribkowsky, a board member of Bayern LB, who was apparently tasked by Ecclestone to ensure the bank sell to Mr. Ecclestone’s client – CVC. On conclusion of this deal Gibkowsky received an alleged $44m from for his troubles from Mr. Ecclestone but he is now serving nearly 9 years in a German jail for his part in the collusion. His conviction is for participating in bribery.

Bayern LB have applied to see the records of the Munich prosecutors who won the Gibkowsky conviction saying, “We are preparing everything to make possible damage claims.” The prosecutors are apparently more than inclined to offer these files up, however, it appears lawyers for Mr. Ecclestone have sought an injunction with the Munich District Court to prevent this.

This may not be the only troubles on the horizon for Mr. Ecclestone, as representatives of Ruth Kirch, widow of the late media tycoon Leo Kirch, also wish to lodge a half a billion dollar lawsuit against Mr. Ecclestone. Kirch used to be the main shareholder of the F1 commercial rights before entering into loan arrangements with Bayern LB offering the rights as collateral.

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