Latest F1 news in brief

Ecclestone will rule F1 until he dies

Alonso visits Ferrari sports car team in Bahrain
Wolff eyeing Hamilton contract talks on Monday
Only 'a coffin' will end Ecclestone's reign now
Raikkonen looking to keep Ferrari seat in 2016
Ecclestone Talks About Series' Billion-Dollar Brand
Horner Says Red Bull 'Not Responsible' For Small Teams
Mediapro, DirecTV To Produce New Latin American Formula One Network

Alonso visits Ferrari sports car team in Bahrain
(GMM) Fernando Alonso has made what might be his last PR appearance for Ferrari in the lead-in to this weekend's 2014 season finale.

The Spaniard and the Italian team are expected to shortly confirm their contractual split after a five-year partnership, as Alonso heads to McLaren-Honda.

"Fernando Alonso, the last act," read the headline at Spain's sports daily Diario Sport.

Having holidayed and cycled last week in perhaps his favorite vacation destination – Dubai, where he has a house – Alonso's next stop at the weekend was Bahrain.

There, he met up with his friend Mark Webber who was competing for Porsche in the world endurance championship race.

Alonso, 33, was not wearing official Ferrari team gear, but he did pose for photos with the official sports car team AF Corse.

Another Spanish daily, AS, explained: "It was one of the last, if not the last public events outside of competition for Alonso as a Ferrari driver.

"The announcement of his move to McLaren-Honda may be imminent."

Germany's Speed Week said Alonso told reporters in Bahrain that he decided to visit Bahrain in order to catch up with his friend and former rival, Australian Webber.

Wolff eyeing Hamilton contract talks on Monday
(GMM) Mercedes has scheduled urgent contractual talks with Lewis Hamilton, as the team looks to keep its dominant pairing together beyond 2015.

Currently, the pair are set to race together once again next year, despite clashing on and off track at times as the intensity of their championship fight heated up.

Earlier this year, Mercedes extended its deal with Nico Rosberg, while teammate Hamilton's contract is still currently set to expire at the end of 2015.

Asked why only Rosberg's deal was extended, team boss Toto Wolff told the Austrian broadcaster ORF: "We didn't want to be in a situation where in a year's time there is the possibility we have to be filling not one but two places.

"Nico is an important part of the team, he fits in well and his performance is good so we wanted to extend at an early stage," he said during the Sport am Sonntag program.

"With Lewis," Wolff continued, "the contract runs for another year anyway and in the summer we started to discuss (extending) it (beyond 2015).

"We have agreed that we want to continue and Lewis has said the same but at some point we decided that it was not the right time to do it. The duel was so intense so we thought it was a good idea to talk after Abu Dhabi.

"Now we have agreed that we get together on Monday in Abu Dhabi to talk about it," said Wolff.

If confirmed, the news looks set to lock Fernando Alonso out of Mercedes for now, following speculation the Spaniard wanted to find a stop-gap solution for 2015 in order to target Hamilton's place in silver for 2016.

But it appears Mercedes is happy with Hamilton and Rosberg, despite their run-ins this season.

Wolff was asked if he even sees the "fire" between the team's current pairing as essential to continue Mercedes' dominance into 2015 and beyond.

"I don't know if fire is important," he said. "The only thing the two are interested in is that they have the fastest race car possible. So I would say at the moment that we have a good situation.

"Clearly there are many others who would like to have this cockpit, but I hope our two see it that way as well and we can go on with this driver combination," added Wolff.

Before the future arrives, however, the eyes of the world will be on Hamilton and Rosberg this weekend in Abu Dhabi as their 2014 championship battle reaches its conclusion.

Asked who the favorite is, Wolff told ORF: "I have been asked this question time and time again in the past days.

"Mathematically, the numbers are on Lewis' side, but we (Mercedes) want to behave neutrally.

"Lewis is in the lead and a second place will be enough to be world champion, so Nico has to hope for a third place or worse (for Hamilton).

"If you look on the basis of the last few races, then everything points to another one-two," he admitted.

Only 'a coffin' will end Ecclestone's reign
(GMM) Buoyed by the end of his legal troubles, Bernie Ecclestone says he is now determined to never step down as F1 chief executive.

Having turned 84 this year, the Briton admits 2014 was particularly difficult as he battled to fight off the Gerhard Gribkowsky scandal that nearly saw him not only nearly deposed, but potentially also in jail.

He won the day with a highly controversial $100 million settlement, and is now once again presiding fully over the F1 kingdom he built almost from scratch.

So Ecclestone is no longer intimating his decades-long reign may be nearing an end. Asked by the correspondent for Gulf News, the diminutive Briton replied rhetorically: "When am I going to quit?

"Sure, it's been a terrible year, one of the worst of my life but, as I have told you often enough before, and nothing has changed, I am staying put," said Ecclestone.

"The only way my job in formula one will come to an end, unless somebody with the power decrees it, is when they are carrying me away in my coffin. And then they'd better make sure the lid is nailed down," he added.

As ever with a specific position taken by Ecclestone, however, he does caution that he might change his mind under some circumstances.

For instance, he told the BBC recently that while he would like to tweak F1's income distribution, as well as the sporting and technical regulations, "The big problem is that now we run a democracy".

"You know I'm against democracies, with anything," said Ecclestone. "You have a democracy if you don't want to do anything except start a working group.

"We have to be able to say 'This is how it's going to be'."

Now, he told Gulf News in London: "I have always run the business the way I thought it should be organized. And it has mostly worked.

"The minute I can't do that, I will quit.

"I have often flown by the seat of my pants with nobody but myself to turn to. Sometimes I've got it wrong — but mostly I've got it right.

"And formula one, and the thousands of people in it, and the many millions of followers worldwide, have been the beneficiaries," he added.

Raikkonen looking to keep Ferrari seat in 2016
(GMM) Kimi Raikkonen is even looking beyond 2015 as he aims to keep his Ferrari career alive for at least two more years.

In the past days, any doubts that the Finn will be ousted by the Maranello team after Sunday's 2014 finale in Abu Dhabi have faded.

That is because Ferrari has confirmed that the 35-year-old – who already has a contract for 2015 – is collaborating with engineers on next year's car and will shortly be working on the team's pre-season preparations.

Not only that, Raikkonen's next teammate Sebastian Vettel is now openly looking forward to working with his friend in 2015, because the Finn has "thank god, zero interest in the politics within a team".

A month ago, when his future was less certain, Raikkonen told CNN he has a Ferrari contract "for next year and probably for one more year".

But his return to red overalls in 2014 has been difficult throughout, as he usually struggled to get close to the pace of his now-departing teammate Fernando Alonso.

After Brazil, however, team boss Marco Mattiacci hailed Raikkonen's progress, insisting the Finn is finally getting to the bottom of his problems with the F14-T car.

Raikkonen told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport: "The problems have come from the new tire construction — last year, the front tires were much better."

Still, he is more confident about the future.

"If you cannot win, it is a season to forget," said Raikkonen. "But at least we have learned a lot for next year."

And he insists that if 2015 goes well, he can even start to think about a third consecutive season wearing red.

"If I have good results next year," Raikkonen is quoted by the German correspondent Michael Schmidt, "then why shouldn't I drive for Ferrari in 2016?"

Ecclestone Talks About Series' Billion-Dollar Brand
Scathingly sanguine "about the financial woes of lesser teams, casually chauvinistic and claiming to open doors for governments," F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone "pulled no punches" in an interview with CAMPAIGN ASIA-PACIFIC Brand Dir Attica Silk. Ecclestone "is under assault on several fronts." The futures of two teams — Caterham and Marussia — "hang in the balance." Pressure "is mounting for a new strategy to tackle Formula One issues, from the spiraling costs and declining television audiences to falling sponsorships figures." Ecclestone, who has fought bribery allegations in London and Munich, "has lived through many of the sport's ups and downs."

Attica Silk: What does the Formula One brand stand for?
Bernie Ecclestone: That's a difficult question to answer. I suppose it is a major sport and most sports are in the entertainment business. Sometimes we tend to lose track of the entertainment and get caught up a bit more on the technical aspect of Formula One, which I'm not happy about. We are very technical and we need to stay that way but I'd rather see a bit more effort on the entertainment.

Silk: How can you bring more of the entertainment factor into Formula One?
Ecclestone: Entertainment is what people want to see.

Silk: What makes Formula One special?
Ecclestone: People like winners and losers. At Formula One, you have one winner and a lot of losers. People can support a particular driver, or a team.

Silk: Is Formula One in crisis?
Ecclestone: No. Good or bad, I've been around Formula One a long time and I've seen it all. I used to own a race team and for 18 years I ran a successful team and won world championships. There are always people that haven't managed to run their business commercially successfully. They spend more than they have for income. We've seen this happen before and this is what's happened again.

Silk: Are you concerned about struggling teams and the impact this will have on F1?
Ecclestone: Not at all. Nobody will miss the two teams because they're not front-running teams; they've only got a name that people would know because of the problem they're in. If you want to get recognized you've got to do something.

Silk: What is the trend in sponsorship that you've seen in recent years?
Ecclestone: There are so many places that brands can put their money in for sponsorship. Why is that? Because there are lots more sports on television these days. They may not be on the premier channels and not with big audiences, but they're there. Some brands, I believe, take the wrong approach. They spend little amounts in a lot of different places that don't deliver much [return on investment].

Silk: How much does F1 need sponsors, versus broadcasting rights or race fees?
Ecclestone: It's not life and death for us. The income comes from promoters that run races, and have to be there to provide a service for the show or the television. Sponsors are there and, of course, if all the sponsors stopped it would hurt us financially but it wouldn't cause as much damage as it would for a race team because we could cut our costs.

Silk: How can Formula One widen its reach (beyond television) to expand its audience base?
Ecclestone: I'm not interested in tweeting, Facebook and whatever this nonsense is. I tried to find out but in any case I'm too old-fashioned. I couldn't see any value in it.

Silk: Do you believe there is no value in reaching this young audience?
Ecclestone: Young kids will see the Rolex brand, but are they going to go and buy one? They can't afford it. Or our other sponsor, UBS — these kids don't care about banking. They haven't got enough money to put in the bloody banks anyway. That's what I think. I don't know why people want to get to the so-called "young generation." Why do they want to do that? Is it to sell them something? CAMPAIGN ASIA-PACIFIC

Horner Says Red Bull 'Not Responsible' For Small Teams
Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner said that F1's front runners "have no obligation to help smaller teams," according to the BBC.

Horner said, "It's not our responsibility. We are a team competing in a championship. You don't see Man United helping QPR. Our obligation is to race and to compete within the rules."

And while Horner believes measures need to be taken to help teams, he "stopped short of saying the sport is in a mess." Horner: "If you read the press it is. Obviously costs are too high and there's not enough income coming into the sport"

Mediapro, DirecTV To Produce New Latin American Formula One Network
Mediapro is to launch a premium F1 channel in Latin America, "distributed by DirecTV across the whole region, with the exception of Brazil," according to RAPID TV NEWS.

As the rights were formerly owned by Fox Broadcasting Company, Mediapro "has also reached an agreement for shared rights of 10 races, with DirecTV exclusively live broadcasting the other 10."

The new channel "will be launched across all the premium platforms — cable, satellite and Internet — and will cover the races as well as the classification rounds, the training sessions and extra interviews and reports." RAPID TV NEWS