Ecclestone backtracks on 'crap' product comment

Bernie Ecclestone has backtracked on a comment he is said to have made, putting further pressure on the sport following comments by Red Bull to quit and condemnation around the engine penalties so far this weekend which have seen grid penalties larger than the grid size.

Ecclestone had been quoted by AFP as saying: “I told them they have given me a crap product to sell.” But later he backpedalled when asked about his comments. The 84-year-old said: “Really? I don’t know who said that. Bad quote.

“The product at the moment is a bit top heavy with one team winning a lot of races, probably too easy. So when Ferrari are getting their act together we’ve seen a big improvement and exactly the same thing happens with McLaren.

“There’s people always complaining about something. The winners never complain. The losers complain. All I’ve ever said is that it’s a pity that one team is at the moment dominating the sport.”

He added: “We need to have a very, very good look at all our sporting regulations. Don’t go over the white line, don’t do this, don’t do that. If you change your engine you go back 20 places. It’s not what the public understand. They don’t understand and when they do understand they don’t care basically.”

With rules agreed by the teams, Ecclestone is seen as the only person who could change the status quo. A return to a dictatorship has already been backed by Red Bull, who also believe that the teams only have their best interests at heart, hence meaningful rule changes are hard to push through.

A whole scale revamp has been mooted for 2017, although little has been suggested about the sporting regulations, only the technical regulations including larger tyres and wider track cars.

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