Bernie Ecclestone, the man who made Formula 1 the commercial success that it is today fears that the sport could be losing out on viewership and revenue because of Mercedes Chief Toto Wolff.
Bernie has slammed Wolff for making the sport highly uncompetitive after refusing to supply Red Bull with engines in 2015.
I blame Mercedes and Toto for putting us in the s*** we are in terms of the competition,” Ecclestone said.
“If they’d given an engine to Red Bull, we’d have three teams for the past three years racing each other.
“The thing I was struggling with for the past four or five years is the fact that there was no competition and I was trying to sell it to the promoters and we were not delivering.
“It was like me being in the music business and getting people to book The Rolling Stones and then not have Mick Jagger turn up.” Ecclestone said.
Ecclestone is not a big fan of the halo and says that Wolff is the one who has pushed the halo through!
“That bloody Halo business….the guy that made that happen was Toto Wolff and the guy who works for the drivers” a furious Ecclestone said.
“Toto’s ideas in some way where right and said ‘if we now don’t do it and there was an accident someone was killed….’
“But I said ‘be careful, because if there is an accident and the guy can’t get out the car and then he died’.” he added.
Ecclestone’s ‘halo related’ comments don’t quite seem true as Wolff himself has been very vocal about how much he ‘hates’ the halo, bringing down the aesthetic value of the machine.
With Liberty Media’s take over close to 11 months back, Ecclestone has been laid off from the sport that he ruled for close to 40 years. Ecclestone surely has a lot of views up his sleeve regarding F1 and how it could be made better, but most of it doesn’t matter now, as Liberty Media have a vision of their own for the sport.
