Has Bernie gone mad?

Has Bernie gone mad?

Has Bernie Ecclestone gone mad? After years of raking race promoters over the coals, Ecclestone now says that new F1 owners Liberty should cut the fees that promoters pay to host races, amid fears that events will be lost because governments no longer want to subsidize them.

"The only thing that would be good for everyone, I think, would be if we could charge the promoters a lot less money," Ecclestone told Motorsport.com.

"I did some good deals commercially. They are paying a lot of money, and most of them if not all of them are not making any money, quite the opposite.

"Sooner or later I'm frightened that the governments behind them will say enough is enough, and bye bye.

"If we could reduce the fee they pay they could then charge less for tickets and sell more tickets. So if you want to look after the fans, that's the way to do it."

"It appears that it's not [Liberty's] prime objective, to make money. Their objective is to please the fans, which is good."

"Malaysia has gone. A lot of these things are left over from what I was doing, when I was doing the day job. We really didn't have a lot of choice. They were going to stop.

"I think I've convinced Singapore to stay. We've changed the conditions and terms a little bit there. They haven't decided yet, but they may still not continue."

"Unless somebody buys Interlagos, it's not going to happen. The city wants to sell. I've got them to agree that whoever buys, in the tender there must be a clause that they must keep the race track.

"So at least we've managed to achieve that. So we've got to get somebody that's going to buy that place and somebody that's going to run a race there.

"They thought they had some people from this part of the world [the Middle East], but I contacted them and they haven't got any money at the moment."