MOTORSPORT: Ecclestone still reaching for the sky

Ecclestone is hoping to get an F1 grand prix up in New York. It's a very, very long shot -- and would be yet another potentially dull race on a temporary street circuit, unless there was rain -- but old Bernie has got to be admired for setting his sights so high.

"I'm trying for 2012, opposite Manhattan in New Jersey with skyscrapers in the background," Ecclestone told Italy's Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.

"Fifteen minutes from the centre of New York to the circuit. It would be marvellous ... a wonder."

GPs have been held at several US venues over the decades without F1 ever getting any serious traction in the country.

Major car manufacturers -- most of which have now quit F1 apart from Mercedes-Benz, Renault and Ferrari -- have seen it as a great weakness of F1 that it has failed to take on in the world's most important market.

In particular they bemoaned that there was no F1 race anywhere in North America last year, although a Canadian GP is back on the calendar this season.

From 2000 to 2007 there was a GP at Indianapolis, one of the hubs of world motorsport.

Crowds dwindled over the years from the 200,000-plus at the start of that era, and the American public was badly burned in 2006 when only six cars raced Michelins tyres were deemed unsafe for the track.

Watkins Glen in upstate New York is remembered most fondly as the home of the US GP in the 1960s and early '70s. Phoenix, Detroit and even a casino carpark in Las Vegas were other venues.

If anyone other than an American can make it happen in New York it's Ecclestone. He's already got agreement for a GP on the streets of Rome, which even Ferrari didn't want.

But, as an associate of this author observed recently, Ecclestone has been the consummate deal maker over a long, long time, but he hasn't necessarily been a great marketer. Indianapolis is evidence of that.

Yet Ecclestone blames others, rather than him and F1 accepting any responsibility for making such a mess of such a golden opportunity; that his show was massively over-priced and massively under-delivered.

"It's all the wrong crowd and wrong people (at Indianapolis)," Ecclestone said. "Nothing worked there really. We'd have to have a big change around, but we'd like to get back there."

In an expansive -- by Ecclestone standards -- interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, he has predicted that seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher's comeback may last longer than the three years for which he is contracted to the Mercedes factory team.

"I think his new career will be long -- maybe even 10 years," Ecclestone said.

Mercedes reserve driver Nick Heidfeld has said that Schumacher will only get better than his sixth and 10th place finishes in the first two GPs of his return in Bahrain and Melbourne.

This author doubts that. He's already 41 and only going to get older. And Ecclestone has indicated that he would welcome disgraced former Renault team boss Flavio Briatore back into F1.

Briatore was banned, effectively for life, by the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) over the "crashgate" scandal out of Singapore's first night GP in 2008.

A French court has handed down a decision seen as overturning that decision, although the FIA disputes that and is appealing.

Briatore, a close associate of Ecclestone and a joint-owner with him in Queen's Park Rangers soccer club, has not signaled any desire to get back into F1, but in any case Ecclestone said: "Why not? I think he could have a role promoting F1."

And of his own future in the sport, Ecclestone said: "I am happy to continue. I'm well and enjoying myself. When I'm not, then I will stop. At the moment we are going through some difficulties and when things are going badly you should lead from the front and try to improve them."

All Power to the bloke from Toowoomba
Time constraints prevented us doing justice to Australia's Will Power's brilliant IndyCar form earlier in the week.

Power, 29, from Toowoomba, has won both rounds so far -- in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and St Petersburgh, Florida -- in his first two starts as a full-time Team Penske driver.

So he has won three of his past four starts, and in eight races with Penske has five top-three finishes. He led 50 of the 100 laps on the treacherous 2.88km St Petersburgh street circuit lined with concrete barriers.

>> Round 3 of the F1 world championship in Malaysia this weekend, with questions in the air about whether Red Bull Racing is running tricky -- and possibly illegal -- gas-filled dampers in an "active ride" suspension on the cars of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. Round 3 of the world rally championship too in Jordan in the Middle East, but no NASCAR or IRL over Easter.

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