Bernie Ecclestone On Keeping His Job And The Future Of Formula One: We'll See

Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone wonders a lot of things. He wonders if the sport would be more interesting if drivers got seriously injured. He wonders why North America is such a shit hole. He wonders why all of the drivers in his sport are such "windbags." And now, he's wondering if he'll keep his job.

American company Liberty Media made the move to purchase F1 in September, and the series' controlling body, the FIA, approved the sale over the week. The original plans for Liberty's takeover were to keep Ecclestone—who is now 86, and whose ideas to "improve" F1 continue to get more absurd—on board, but Motorsport reports that Ecclestone said on Thursday that his future now rests with Liberty as they finalize the changes they'd like to make in the sport.

One of those changes reportedly includes making all 20 races on the F1 schedule the "equivalent of the Super Bowl," which would entail week-long activities surrounding each race. According to Motorsport, Liberty also wants to consider changing up the schedule and expanding its digital presence—the latter being something the sport desperately needs to do.

There have been rumors about potential replacements to take over areas that Ecclestone controls now that the series has new owners, such as marketing, sponsorship and media rights. But in November, Ecclestone adamantly denied that any changes were coming.

Despite that, it sounds like Ecclestone's just going to roll with it if Liberty does boot him out. From Motorsport:

"We will have to see how we set the company up," he said. "It is not a case of my terms, it is a case of let's have a look and see which way they would like to go.

"It is something that would have happened anyway. We need to put something together if I am not here because I have become deceased or something, and it is about time we did that.

"We were in the middle [of that] and when we knew these people were probably going to buy, we backed off and thought 'let's wait because they own the company and it is up to them to decide who or what they want'."

Motorsport reports that Ecclestone reiterated how Liberty asked him to stay for three years, saying management was in the process of finding people who "can look after all the things [he] have been trying to find people to do" such as work with sponsorship.

But other than that, he just said he'll "see how we are going to operate"—even if he's not included in that "we" much longer.

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