Bernie Ecclestone: No hard feelings towards Liberty over F1 exit - MotorSportsTalk

Bernie Ecclestone says he has no ill feeling towards Liberty Media following his exit as CEO of Formula 1 in January, but would have preferred to spend at least one more year in the role.

Ecclestone enjoyed a 40-year stint at the helm of F1 before being forced to resign from his position two months ago when Liberty completed its $8 billion takeover of the series.

Ecclestone was replaced by American executive Chase Carey, who will form part of a triumvirate to run the sport alongside commercial chief Sean Bratches and technical expert Ross Brawn.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Ecclestone said that he felt no ill feeling towards Liberty despite being removed from his role after initially planning to extend his stint in charge.

“Not at all. I know the way the world operates,” Ecclestone said, before adding that he would have preferred to spend one more year in the role to see if he could work with Liberty.

“I would have asked them to work with me for a bit, wait for a year and afterwards say: ‘Has it worked, not worked?'” Ecclestone said.

“‘Not worked? Sorry, you’ll have to leave,’ or whatever. But different people operate companies differently, obviously.

“I think this is very much the way American companies operate. Let’s be absolutely sensible about it: they bought the car, they wanted to drive it.”

Ecclestone did however feel that Liberty had judged him too harshly on his business record in F1, having previously said that the sport had not been maximizing its potential.

“These people have thought and said, and Chase has said, that I hadn’t done a very good job in the last three years,” Ecclestone said.

“I thought I had, CVC thought I had, and I managed to produce $1.5 billion-a-year income, which made their shares worth a lot of money.

“Maybe if I’d have done a lousy job people could have bought the shares cheaper.”

Now in the honorary role of ‘chairman emeritus’, Ecclestone said he plans to attend around half of the F1 races in 2017.

“I’ve been asked and invited to go to most of them, so I’ll have to try and sort it out. Probably at least half of them,” Ecclestone confirmed.

The new F1 season begins on March 26 in Melbourne, Australia.

Follow @LukeSmithF1

Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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