“The Art of War – Five Years in Formula One” book

Ecclestone de Montezemolo spat deepens, Pirelli want a long contract, Silverstone lost £1m, Austrian GP? Tyre stats for 2012

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Ecclestone Responds to Il Padrino: Bernie Ecclestone has responded via the BBC to Luca de Montezemolo’s comments about his age and competence. “The one thing he is correct about is my age – there is no doubt about that. I can’t do anything about that. I’m 82 years old and that’s how it is.”

He alludes to the Italian teams bosses apparent rudeness being a result of his recent foray into Italian politics. “I suppose it’s the same sort of thing that’s happened to him recently in politics, where people have been quite rude about him.

Amusingly Ecclestone turns the tables on Luca and suggests his memory is faulty too. “He says he doesn’t remember what he says very often. Luca is not as old as me. I’m sure in his case it is nothing to do with his age because he’s always been the same. At least he’s consistent. God knows what’s going to happen when he’s 82”.

The fatherly advice from Ecclestone continues, “No, Luca is a lovely guy, I’m probably as a big a supporter of him as anybody. I am a big admirer of Luca’s and I’m sorry for all the trouble he’s had with politics recently. He should never have got involved in the first place.”

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Ecclestone, Parr and the “Night of the long knives”

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A man speaks up

Remember back to the 3rd ever FOTA fans forum in Montreal 2011. Adam Parr, the then chairman of Williams, called for F1 to challenge Bernie Ecclestone over the direction of the sport. His basic premise was that Mr. E doesn’t really understand modern technology and is missing a significant number of opportunities to drive F1 revenue.

I think I heard someone else in the past few days suggests age was a factor mitigating F1’s CEO ability to operate competently. Parr said that night, ‘The way F1 is consumed is going to change over the next few years. There’s so much content you should be able to enjoy. Bernie has two or three cameras on every car. Then there are all the circuit cameras.

‘There’s an astonishing richness of material and we’re not really touching that at the moment.’ Assessing the way Ecclestone manages content, Parr added: ‘There are two things that Bernie thinks about. First, he likes to control the amount of material that’s available. He believes that rarity is an important characteristic of our sport.

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