MOTORSPORT: High Court damns Ecclestone

But despite this, Ecclestone was the winner in the case in London’s High Court, with German media group Constantin Medien losing its action for up to US$144 million – about A$160 million – after claiming it had been disadvantaged because the sale of a major stake in the F1 business had gone through at much less than its true value.

Red Bull Racing finally recorded some serious mileage with its troublesome RB10 as F1 pre-season testing reached its midpoint in Bahrain overnight, but its four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel was still almost 5.5sec slower than the quickest car – the McLaren MP-29 driven by Danish rookie Kevin Magnussen.

The start of the V8 Supercar Championship is now just a week away in Adelaide – the first season with five makes as Volvo takes on the Holdens, Fords, Nissans and AMG Mercedes.

Apart from the serious competition at the Clipsal 500, a special Nissan ‘Time Attack’ will pit its all-electric LEAF Nismo RC prototype against its Altima V8 Supercar and the ‘Godzilla’ GT-R roadcar that reappeared (in GT3 trim) at Bathurst recently.

Meanwhile, Bernie Ecclestone has predicted that the new electric open-wheeler world championship starting in September is doomed to fail. Five-time V8 Supercar champion Jamie Whincup is set to sign a one-year extension to his contract with Triple Eight Race Engineering that will take him through to the end of the 2015 season, raising questions about whether he – and perhaps the team - may leave Holden then. And Ford’s reigning Bathurst 1000 champion Mark Winterbottom is off to Brazil between Melbourne’s Grand Prix in mid-March and the second round of the V8 Supercar Championship in Tasmania two weeks later – to race a Peugeot 408 in a V8-powered silhouette series in which fellow Aussie Dean Canto is to race a Chevrolet.

Walkinshaw Racing has confirmed that American-based British driver Oliver Gavin will partner Garth Tander’s 2011 Bathurst 1000-winning co-driver Nick Percat in this year’s V8 Supercar enduros in September-October after testing with the Holden squad at Sydney Motorsport Park last Saturday.

The Australian Financial Review’s list of only six V8 Supercar rounds to be televised live on the Ten Network next year may have been wrong including Darwin. Expect Melbourne’s Sandown 500 to be among the six, rather than Darwin, when an announcement is made next Thursday. All rounds from next year will be live on subscription TV service Fox Sports.

And finally, coming up on Monday morning, Australian east coast time, is America’s biggest race, the Daytona 500 in Florida. Already organisers have had to replace some of the 4km banked speedway’s catch fencing after a huge crash in practice this week. The venue already had strengthened its fencing after a crash last year which injured 30 fans.

Mounting focus on Ecclestone’s future in ‘driver’s seat’
Bernie Ecclestone said after Justice Guy Newey’s judgment last night in the London civil case, that he was relieved at not having to pay the massive damages Constantin Medien claimed. But after the case which ran for several weeks, there will now be increasing focus on the 83-year-old’s future at the helm of F1.

Ecclestone is due to face a criminal trial in Germany in April, charged with bribery and incitement to breach of trust, over the US$44 million payments he made to jailed banker Gerhard Gribkowsky. The Londoner could be imprisoned for up to a decade if convicted.

So often the victor in legal stoushes, Ecclestone flippantly remarked recently that he doubted the German case would even proceed. However, in light of Justice Newey’s damning conclusions m, leading British commentators are querying how long Ecclestone can remain in charge of F1.

While he remains in day-to-day control of the multi-billion-dollar business he has run for almost four decades, he recently stood aside as a director of various F1 companies – perhaps meaning chairman Peter Brabeck or deputy chairman Donald Mackenzie instead may have to sign any major deals ( an extension of Melbourne’s GP contract beyond 2015 is among those in the melting pot).

BBC chief sports correspondent Dan Roan said that Constantin Medien’s failed damages claim would be bitter-sweet for Ecclestone because of his integrity being questioned by Justice Newey.

“The judge’s remarks will call into question his leadership of the sport,” Roan said.

Roan’s s BBC sports editor colleague David Bond said the judge’s comment were “damning and must seriously call into question his ability to continue as the chief executive of F1”.

“Ecclestone is a great survivor and judging by his immediate response to the judgment he is not going anywhere fast… [but] at the very least it is fair to conclude that Mr Justice Newey’s opinion is anything but helpful to Ecclestone’s case in Germany,” Bond said.

Ecclestone said in response to the judge’s comments: “I’ve run the sport for the last 30-odd years… so, if I was unreliable and whatever, I have been lucky to have been as successful as we have been”.

He reiterated that he would welcome the opportunity to defend the bribery allegations against him in Germany.

Ecclestone has admitted giving Gribkowsky the US$44 million at the time almost half the shares in the F1 business passed from a banking syndicate to private equity company CVC. He claims the payments were because the banker was blackmailing him over his tax affairs.

However, Justice Newey said: “The payments were a bribe. They were made because Mr Ecclestone had entered into a corrupt agreement with Dr Gribkowsky on May 2005 under which Dr Gribkowsky was to be rewarded for facilitating the sale of [bank] Bayern LB’s shares in the F1 Group to a buyer acceptable to Mr Ecclestone.

“Mr Ecclestone’s aim was to be rid of the banks. He was strongly averse to their involvement in the F1 Group and was keen that their shares should be transferred to someone more congenial to him.

“Even making allowances for the lapse of time and Mr Ecclestone’s age, I am afraid that I find it impossible to regard him as a reliable or truthful witness.”

Ecclestone said after the judgment that “I think I answered truthfully the questions I was asked” in court. He said US$44 million would have been “an awful lot of money to pay somebody to keep your job”.

“I’ve said he [Gribkowsky] shook me down a bit. And I was stupid to go along with it. It was cheaper to pay him… than have the Inland Revenue [British tax authorities] climb all over me for three or four years when I had to prove something that he’d said didn’t happen,” Ecclestone said.

Mr E also sees Formula E losing its spark quickly
As if Ecclestone doesn’t have enough to occupy him, the F1 ringmaster has taken a swipe at the new electric open-wheeler world championship, Formula E. The new open-wheel class starts in September with the strong imprimatur of motor sport’s world governing body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

Ecclestone predicted that racing near-silent cars in the centre of some of the world’s major cities [although not in Australia] was doomed to fail.

“For them [the organisers] it’s a commercial thing. One or two of them are going to make a few quid and that will be the end of it,” Ecclestone said.

“I can’t see it ever working. I know how much it costs to put a street race together.”

Red Bull gets rolling – now it’s Ricciardo’s turn
Sebastian Vettel drove 59 laps of Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit in Red Bull’s RB10 last night – almost twice the number it had done in the five previous days of F1 pre-season testing.

“We did more laps today than so far the whole year, which is a step forward,” Vettel said of the car he now hands over to new Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo for tonight and tomorrow’s testing in the Middle East.

While the sign of some reliability in the Renault-powered RB10 was something of an achievement for Red Bull, Vettel was only the seventh quickest of the 11 drivers on the Sakhir track – 5.43sec slower than young Dane Kevin Magnussen in the Mercedes-powered McLaren.

Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg, quickest the previous day, was second fastest last night – more than 1.5sec behind Magnussen.

Ferarri’s Fernando Alonso and the Mercedes factory team’s Nico Rosberg were third and fourth. However, Mercedes halted a race simulation run by Rosberg because of sensor failures.

Finn Valtteri Bottas completed the most laps for the day, 116, while Alonso did 97 in the Ferrari.

Another four-day test is scheduled for Bahrain next week before the new 1.6-litre turbocharged cars are flown to Melbourne for the season-opening GP on March 14-16.

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