Three more years of Bernie siphoning cash out of the sport, generally not giving a crap and mostly acting like a complete dinosaur. The futures bright! I'm fast running out of patience with this crap.
I just don't get it. The sports in decline with Bernie a major culprit. Why would a new owner want that to continue. What's the point if you're guaranteeing a major loss of resale value.
I find Bernie difficult to read. I don't think the commercialisation on the whole is an issue until it gets to car manufacturers doing his green stuff to sell road cars. In fact he is the only one who voices disapproval about the engines, the rules, and most of the fan annoyances. Does he just say one thing and do another (I must confess I haven't studied the man)so forgive me for sounding naive. I would say at 85 the power should be being handed down to someone who knows racing- I'd like the Mansells, Prosts et al to be having a say and steering the actual sport and racing, with someone who knows how to market and cover sport running the money side. Sounds like the group coming in are very well tied with Rupert Murdoch which should really give people hope that the racing will become more exciting for Sky, but based on their absolute abomination of covering F1 over the past few seasons, I'm not looking forward to it!
He just sucks all the money out of the sport, let's team struggle to get a foot hold and take the sport to exotic places like Azerbaijan while holding a gun to the heads of decent venues. Other than that... he's doing great!
Liberty are more involved with Virgin Media and ITV than Sky aren't they? I'd hope they'd be keen to use that to take F1 from Sky. The Bernie 'news' is hardly surprising, a transition period is to be expected. I can't see it being 3 years though, I think Liberty will want more changes than Bernie will want to make, and he'll go off in a huff.
Wonder if in the new board meetings someone will keep blowing up a paper bag behind his head, or accidentally setting off the fire alarm to make the old bugger jump?
Most likely not... but we can live in hope that they're just waiting to get their feet under the table before dropping the axe.
Don't get me wrong, Bernie is a problem to the sport, but i don't think he's the single biggest issue. If i had to chose, i'd have preferred to see Bernie go now and a clean slate come in, but i guess he's in for 3 years to allow the new people to get their feet under the table, see how the deals work and the likes and see close hand what they might want to alter behind the scenes. Overall i think this is brilliant news for F1. As big an issue as Bernie is, CVC were bigger. Even if Bernie wanted to change it. at the end of the day CVC held the cards and if it wasn't increasing their profit in the very short term, it was never going anywhere. With a sports media company in, i reckon they'll do a lot more to promote it, get the sport exciting and more marketable for America and increase the value that way rather than just chasing the fastest buck now, as CVC were.
Still being an inspiration to anyone who has had their life turned upside down by disability. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/disability-sport/37368133
They don't even mention in the article that he did return to racing cars and won a WTCC race prior to doing this new discipline.
It's quite incredible what he's achieved over the years. He's one remarkable bloke. Hard to believe he was all but dead.
