Niki Lauda has revealed he is worried formula one will struggle for health if Bernie Ecclestone is no longer at the wheel.<\/p>\n
F1’s long-time ‘supremo’ could even be jailed if he is found guilty of bribery and corruption in a criminal trial that begins in Germany next month.<\/p>\n
“Without him and his knowledge, formula one would fall into a giant hole,” Lauda, the chairman of the Mercedes team and a triple world champion, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.<\/p>\n
He said it would be “incredibly difficult” for the sport if Ecclestone, 83, is no longer able to run F1 “from one day to the next”.<\/p>\n
Given the sport’s size, many insiders find it hard to believe a succession plan is not ready to be unfurled, but Lauda said: “I don’t know if Bernie can be so easily replaced.”<\/p>\n
The great Austrian said the diminutive Briton has done a “perfect job” for the sport over the years.<\/p>\n
“He made some small errors, but each of us has done that,” Lauda insisted.<\/p>\n
Even Ecclestone admits that paying the jailed former F1 banker Gerhard Gribkowsky to quieten him about his tax affairs might have been a mistake.<\/p>\n
“I regret paying him,” he told the F1 business journalist Christian Sylt.<\/p>\n
“I should have let him write to the (British) Revenue and let them prove what he said,” Ecclestone is quoted by the Express newspaper.<\/p>\n
“It is a wonderful thing, hindsight.”<\/p>\n
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