{"id":14065,"date":"2011-10-27T07:09:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T11:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=14065"},"modified":"2011-10-27T07:09:47","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T11:09:47","slug":"ex-f1-co-owner-mused-sacking-ecclestone-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/ex-f1-co-owner-mused-sacking-ecclestone-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex F1 co-owner mused sacking Ecclestone &#8211; witness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>German bank and former F1 shareholder BayernLB contemplated dismissing Bernie Ecclestone six years ago, it emerged during Gerhard Gribkowsky&#8217;s corruption trial this week.<\/p>\n<p>The trial, with Briton Ecclestone set to appear as a witness next month, surrounds the F1 chief executive&#8217;s suspect payment of millions to Gribkowsky, who was then in charge of BayernLB&#8217;s F1 share.<\/p>\n<p>An employee testified on Wednesday that Ecclestone heard during bank meetings several times in 2005 that F1 &#8220;could do without him&#8221;, the Reuters news agency reports.<\/p>\n<p>Ecclestone, turning 81 on Friday, told the German newspaper Die Welt this week that formula one would survive without him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It would,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but things would be very different if I&#8217;m not there.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have a very great and strong support from many people, with a lot of mutual trust.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the leadership was to change, nothing would be affected seriously but it would be more complicated and difficult because that trust might not be there any more.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People would probably want to read the contracts ten times more than if I was there,&#8221; added Ecclestone.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>German bank and former F1 shareholder BayernLB contemplated dismissing Bernie Ecclestone six years ago, it emerged during Gerhard Gribkowsky&#8217;s corruption trial this week. The trial, with Briton Ecclestone set to appear as a witness next month, surrounds the F1 chief executive&#8217;s suspect payment of millions to Gribkowsky, who was then in charge of BayernLB&#8217;s F1 &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[3332,59,5262,5340,2638],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14066,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14065\/revisions\/14066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}