MOTORSPORT: Ecclestone blasts 'totally absurd' F1

Victorian premier thinks GP is a lot bigger than SuperBowl
Less than six weeks out from the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, and amid negotiations for an extension of the contract for the Melbourne event, Bernie Ecclestone has branded the new, “green” Formula One cars “totally absurd” and “completely unnecessary nonsense”.

In the wake of last week’s first pre-season test in Spain - where the 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 cars were 10 seconds and more a lap slower than the previous V8s and notoriously unreliable, especially those like world champion team Red Bull’s with Renault engines – Ecclestone said: “I said it was going to be like this – a total farce.

“We had an engine that was perfect, everybody liked the sound, it was reliable, didn’t cause anybody trouble and was much more cheap than what they currently have to use ... that’s all disappeared.”

Ecclestone said that, while the turbo V6s would not sound as good as the V8s, the saving grace could be that unpredictability – or unreliability – could make the season exciting. He hoped Melbourne’s March 16 GP would be “like a wet race, so we’re not going to know who’s going to win”.

Ecclestone continues to run F1 day-to-day even though he faces a criminal trial, charged with bribery, in Germany in April.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation chairman Ron Walker has been negotiating an extension to Melbourne’s GP contract, expiring next year, with Ecclestone – and claimed at today’s official launch of next month’s event those talks would not be affected by the imminent trial.

Walker, who is delegated the negotiating role by the Victorian government, had been wanting a five-year extension to Melbourne’s contract but said Ecclestone had suggested two years.

Walker has said negotiations “are continuing in a favourable direction”, that there have been some “sticking points”, but that they were “nothing serious”.

Victorian premier Denis Napthine said his government saw value in keeping the GP, that it remained a key part of its major events platform, but that it would only agree a new contract at a fair price to the state’s taxpayers.

The event has cost Victoria more than $50 million annually – seemingly more than Ecclestone’s sanction fee – in recent years, although the bill was reduced by several million dollars last year.

“We think the Grand Prix is a wonderful event ... seen by 450-500 million people on television around the world, but it has to be at a cost that is reasonable for the taxpayers of Victoria,” Napthine said at today’s launch.

Napthine’s TV figures are several times the audience that will have watched today’s US SuperBowl and 15 times or more the figures of world-leading TV analyst Kevin Alavy for the Melbourne’s GP.

While he has been the sport’s commercial supremo for more than 30 years, Ecclestone said it was the rule-making Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and the F1 teams that had wanted the turbocharged engines with energy recovery and recycling systems and a strict limit on fuel usage – 100kg per car per race, about two-thirds that of recent years.

“If they wanted to race like this they should go to Le Mans [France’s annual 24-Hour sports car classic],” Ecclestone told London’s Daily Mail.

“They talk about saving fuel. They don’t need these new engines to achieve that.

“They should get smaller motorhomes [which they take to European GPs]. Then they wouldn’t need so many trucks going all round Europe.

“Mercedes are taking 23 trucks with them everywhere. If they really wanted to save fuel they should stop that.

“The whole thing with the new engines is totally absurd.

“People want noise – something special, that’s what F1 is all about – and now we have quiet engines and nobody on the track [a lot of the time in testing].”

And, in an interview with Reuters, Ecclestone added: “I hate saying I told you so, but I’m disappointed because I told you so and this is what’s happened.”

He said the likely unpredictability was “the only thing that’s good”.

“I think the cars will be unreliable, so you won’t be able to go to a race and say, ‘My God, this guy’s going to win easily’, because you don’t know,” Ecclestone said.

“And even if somebody is leading a race you can’t guarantee they are going to continue.

“In some ways anything that’s a little bit not too predictable is good.”

Red faces at Renault over ‘litany of issues’
Red Bull tallied only 21 laps in four days of testing last week at Jerez in Spain – and that figure includes Daniel Ricciardo’s first outing on the third day which ended in smoke without completing the lap.

On the final day the Aussie did only seven laps and was the slowest driver on the track before the world champion team departed prematurely.

“It’s been a very difficult test," Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said.

“We have had numerous Renault issues as well as chassis cooling issues which have affected our progress.

“However, despite the lack of mileage, what we have managed to learn shows that the problems should be solvable for the next test in Bahrain (in mid-February).”

Red Bull did the fewest laps of the 10 teams at the test (Lotus was missing) while Mercedes did 309, Ferrari 251 and McLaren – with Mercedes power – 245.

Williams – now with a Mercedes engine – topped Friday’s timesheet with its veteran Brazilian recruit Felipe Massa in its FW36 car, although Danish rookie Kevin Magnussen’s time from Thursday in the McLaren MP4-29 remained the fastest of the week.

Renault – engine supplier to Red Bull, its smaller sister team Toro Rosso and Caterham – was embarrassed by the multitude of problems it experienced.

“We have not run enough laps, and when we have they have not been run at an acceptable performance level,” Renault Sport F1’s deputy managing director Rob White said.

“We are very frustrated to face this litany of issues that we should have ironed out on the dyno [test bed] and which have deprived us of a precious learning opportunity.”

However, White claimed useful progress still had been made, no big new fundamental problems had emerged at the end and that Renault had the resources to overcome its woes.

“The step we must take to reach an acceptable level of performance is bigger than we would have liked,” he said.

“It is unacceptable that we have not been able to mitigate the problems sufficiently to allow our partners to run at any length.

“We are working hard to correct this in time for the first Bahrain test (in mid-February) and aim to make amends there.”

Red Bull’s four-time world champion driver Sebastian Vettel clocked up only 11 laps on the first two days of the test before handing over to new teammate Ricciardo, who did even less.

Red Bull race engineering co-ordinator Andy Damerum said the team had been making progress on the final day until another issue prompted it to pack up and retreat to its British factory early.

Damerum said two weeks was a long time in F1 and was “sure Renault will work flat out now to solve the problems we’ve been having”.

Total laps at F1’s first four-day pre-season test - by team (power unit, where different):
1. Mercedes 309
2. Ferrari 251
3. McLaren (Mercedes) 245
4. Williams (Mercedes) 175
5. Sauber (Ferrari) 163
6. Force India (Mercedes) 146
7. Caterham (Renault) 76
8. Toro Rosso (Renault) 54
9. Marussia (Ferrari) 30
10. Red Bull (Renault) 21

Total laps run - by power unit:
1. Mercedes 875 (4 teams)
2. Ferrari 444 (3 teams)
3. Renault 151 (3 teams)