Bernie Ecclestone: F1 boss’ time could be running out

F1’s tyre supplier has been chosen owing to its willingness to pay large amounts of money and bend to Ecclestone’s demands rather than its product satisfying teams and drivers.

Those tyres have had a questionable effect on the racing, guaranteeing pit stops and differentiations of pace while preventing drivers from pushing to the maximum as they have in the past.

After six years, this has finally been recognised as a problem and there is a new tyre design for 2017. Again, though, it remains to be seen whether it works.

Addressing the issues Liberty bosses will find in their in-tray will not be easy.

That said, the group only wants to buy F1 because of the level Ecclestone has taken it to.

He started his involvement with the commercial side of the sport in the early 1970s, when he owned the Brabham team.

The path to his current position began when he offered to look after the team’s commercial relationships with key outside bodies – the circuits, governing body, and particularly negotiating the television rights, which had previously been handled on a haphazard race-by-race basis.

It’s unlikely Ecclestone foresaw then the billion-dollar business F1 would become, but he certainly recognised the chance to make a lot of money, and wasted little time in building his influence.

He persuaded television companies to buy F1 as a package, rather than pay for individual races. That vastly increased exposure, and the sport’s popularity grew, at first slowly then increasingly quickly.