FOTA teams on ‘collision course’ – Ecclestone

The teams association FOTA is on “a collision course” with itself, Bernie Ecclestone said on Wednesday.

A row between the F1 chief executive and the separate union of the sport’s competing teams has been heating up at recent races.

First, through the sponsorship arm Allsport, the teams were warned about putting sponsor logos on the garage walls, and then the teams’ tractor units were ordered out of the Silverstone paddock.

“There is no space for FOTA,” the 79-year-old Briton said two weeks ago.

It is believed his disdain dates back to 2009, when the then powerful FOTA muscularly threatened to split from formula one over rules and revenue.

Ecclestone told the Evening Standard: “I’m not on a collision course with FOTA, they’re on a collision course with each other.

“Competitors will never be together.  You can’t expect 12 race teams to all be together on everything.”

As for the sponsor logo spat, he explained: “The teams were putting sponsorship on property that belongs to us.  I explained to them that’s fine and maybe we wouldn’t have a problem with that if we could put some things on their cars.”

Williams chief executive Adam Parr makes light of the argument.

“I think Bernie sometimes wakes up on a Wednesday morning and says to himself ‘I’m going to yank a few chains’.

“99 per cent of the time, we resolve these things without any blood being spilled.”

Ecclestone almost confirms Parr’s suspicions.

“I like achieving things and I see myself as something of a firefighter and I never get tired of it.  And if there are no fires, we light a few of our own,” he said.

Said FOTA’s chairman Martin Whitmarsh: “I think we’re looking forward to working with Bernie and making the sport better, not slugging it out with him.”

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