Bernie Ecclestone has told the smaller teams in Formula One to put their businesses in order and stop asking for hand-outs. F1’s impresario said his advice to them was: “Don’t spend as much. Try to run your company in a very sensible way, which companies have to do. Cut your expenditure to meet your income. Don’t spend as much as you like and hope somebody is going to subsidise you.”
But, as he spoke at Interlagos before Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, he was also engaged in further talks with Force India, Sauber and Lotus as well as the bigger teams as he attempted to thrash out a coherent business plan for F1 following the collapse of Caterham and Marussia.
When they were all over,, as darkness fell on Interlagos, Force India’s principal, Vijay Mallya, said: “How do we know how long this discussion will take? Bernie recognises that the three smallest teams require finance in one form or another. Something needs to be done. What needs to be done, even he hasn’t got a clue. It’s unlikely that progress will be made in a short period of time.”
Ecclestone added: “The teams have a contract. They get paid what they are committed to get paid. It’s £50m-60m million a year or something. They want three times more, and not do anything different to what they’re doing. What they don’t understand is that only one team’s going to win. It’s always been like that. The problem is simple. Some people have been spending more than they’ve got. It’s very easy. If you spend more money than you’ve got coming into your pocket, you’re in trouble.”
Earlier Ecclestone, described Caterham’s plan to get back into the sport through crowdfunding as a “disaster” for the sport. Caterham’s administrators have already raised over £500,000 as they try to find £2.35m to get the team to the last race in Abu Dhabi.He said: “I think it’s a disaster. We don’t want begging bowls. If people can’t afford to be in Formula 1, they have to find something else to do. If I sit in a poker game and I can’t afford to be there with the other people, I have to leave.”
He added: “I don’t know what they do with their money. I don’t spend their money. We just give it to them. We give the teams nearly $900m a year. The trouble is they haven’t really understood. All the teams here want to win. Some teams have more money and they spend it.
“When I had a race team a few years ago, in fact a few hundred years ago, I used to run the team according to how much money we could spend and we won the world championship. That’s what they don’t do. They don’t seem to understand that somebody is going to be last.”
Asked if greed was killing F1 Gérard Lopez, the Lotus owner, said: “Gordon Gekko said ‘greed is good’ and look what happened to him. He ended up in jail. I’ve never threatened any kind of protest but this is a £1.6bn business and teams are going to the wall for the sake of a couple of tens of millions.
“Three-car teams will be the death of the championship. People just don’t seem to care enough about the sport to do something.”
