Bernie Ecclestone has taken another swipe at Chase Carey, his successor as Formula 1 CEO, suggesting he “try and run the company properly”.
A new spat appears to have broken out after the current bosses issued a statement last weekend distancing themselves from the 89-year-old following controversial comments to CNN in which he claimed: “In a lot of cases, black people are more racist than white people.”
Whether related or not, Ecclestone has now gone on to criticise his successor as not being the right leader for F1.
“Chase should try to run the company properly,” he told the Daily Mail.
“A problem for him is that he has never before been in a position of running something where he has his money invested.
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“When I was running things, we had a look at who could take over if I got knocked over or died. We tried to find people, but what we needed was another used car dealer.
“A dealer, that’s what Chase isn’t. They could have had Chase involved for sure, but they needed a dealer in there.
“Not [F1 motorsport director] Ross Brawn, he’s not a dealer. As a number two Ross is a friend, but you need someone who can handle all the different things.”
Something else that may have triggered Ecclestone is included in the statement condemning his comments, it was revealed the position of Chairman Emeritus, which he was given after Liberty Media completed their takeover in 2017, had expired.
“Well, I didn’t know anything about this,” he told GPFans.
“How this actually happened was that after they bought the company, and they had obviously bought my shares, Chase called and asked to see me.
“I was obviously asked to step down. They’d already prepared a document for me to sign, to resign.
“They couldn’t fire me because I had a three-year contract I’d drawn up years and years before for myself with the company, that I owned, so that contract was still in existence.
“It all went from there. They said they wanted to give me a very honourable position, which in America is important, the sort of thing they give to a president [of a company] when he retires.
“So they gave me that, but I didn’t know it was only for a period of three years, which was the period of my contract anyway, and which, in fairness, they paid under that contract.
“But I didn’t know about the period of time for this position.”
