Formula 1 CEO Chase Carey has criticised his predecessor Bernie Ecclestone, claiming he and others have been left frustrated since taking over.
Carey brought to an end Ecclestone’s 40-year tenure at the top of F1 earlier this year, as Liberty Media completed the deal to become new majority shareholders.
He, alongside managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn and managing director of commercial Sean Bratches, are still finding their feet as they come up on 100 days in charge, building the structures they hope will become the foundation of the sport for years to come.
However, as they continue to implement their own structures for the future, Carey blasted the short-sightedness of some Ecclestone practices.
“Day-to-day I find a level of frustration,” he told Press Association Sport. “It was very much a sport that got into a habit of saying ‘no’ too much.
“I want to be saying ‘yes’ to a whole lot more. What is the value of having an idea if the answer to everything you want to do is ‘no’? All it does is create frustration.
“There are an array of things that weren’t done that needed to be done,” he added. “We felt it was a sport that for the last five or six years had really not been managed to its full potential or taken advantage of what was here.
“All of us make mistakes and nobody is perfect. Bernie took a business from decades ago and sold it for eight billion dollars. He deserves all the credit in the world for what he has done. But in today’s world you need to market a sport. We were not marketing the sport.”
Carey also spoke about trying to bring about a sense of inclusion between the major parties in F1, something that would be a stark contrast to the man he replaced.
“When you have someone so identified with the sport for such a long period of time there is always going to be some degree of complexity. I will do what I think is right.
“Bernie’s style was divide and conquer, to keep everything very close, but we want it to be a spirit of partnership in that we compete on the track,” he explained.
“The teams, the promoters, Formula One and the FIA all have a shared vision of where we want the sport to go and building it in a way that is healthy for everybody.
“It has been three months and we have been very clear that one of the things the sport has not been served well by is a continued short-term focus, and what we are going to do next week.
“We care more about where the sport is going to be three years from now than three months from now,” he added. “Bernie was always very focused on the short term, and our focus is on building long-term value.”
One thing Carey hopes to do by introducing a longer-term vision, along with greater collaboration, is to avoid rash changes that sound good at first, but after some evaluating have a detrimental impact on F1.
“Some of the decisions that were made needed to have a better process to think through,” he claimed.
“The current engine, for example, ended up being too complicated, too expensive, and lost some of the sound that added to the mystique of the sport.
“As it happens, Ecclestone was vehemently against the new formula, and having delayed its initial introduction, to the fury of the manufacturers, continued to be critical of it.
“We will do things and some things take time,” he continued, “you are not going to have a new engine in two months because if you tried to do that you are going to do more harm than good.
“We want to make sure we have the tools to manage the business as opposed to throwing things out there so somebody has a media story.”
