Bernie Ecclestone has added even more fuel to the ever-growing ‘Audi-to-F1’ speculation.<\/p>\n
Former Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and F1 legend Gerhard Berger fuelled the rumours last week, suggesting Dietrich Mateschitz is pushing hard for the Volkswagen-owned marque to power or even buy his struggling team Red Bull.<\/p>\n
Recently, arguably the biggest obstacle to VW’s involvement was removed when chairman Ferdinand Piech – no fan of F1 supremo Ecclestone – was ousted.<\/p>\n
What followed was Audi chairman Rupert Stadler admitting that the Ingolstadt-based marque, already with Stefano Domenicali on the books, is “looking at” an F1 foray.<\/p>\n
When asked about the Volkswagen Group, Ecclestone has now told the Austrian news agency APA: “It would be great if they came in” to F1.<\/p>\n
Should a VW brand like Audi enter F1, it might end all the speculation about Red Bull – currently struggling with Renault power – quitting the sport.<\/p>\n
“They (Red Bull) won’t leave,” Ecclestone said.\u00a0 “I want to avoid that.”<\/p>\n
The 84-year-old also said he understands Red Bull’s frustration with the current ‘power unit’ rules.<\/p>\n
“I can understand that and I’m not happy about it either,” said Ecclestone.<\/p>\n
But as for whether a full or part-sale to Volkswagen is the solution for Red Bull, he answered: “I don’t know that — you would have to ask them.”<\/p>\n
Ecclestone did, however, urge Red Bull not to over-analyse its struggle to sell as many tickets for its forthcoming Austrian grand prix this year.<\/p>\n
Pointing to the F1 rules crisis, Dr Helmut Marko had revealed in Barcelona that ticket sales for the late June race at the Red Bull Ring are down on 2014.<\/p>\n
“In the second year that is quite normal,” Ecclestone insisted.\u00a0 “In the first year, when something is new, it is always easier.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bernie Ecclestone has added even more fuel to the ever-growing ‘Audi-to-F1’ speculation. Former Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and F1 legend Gerhard Berger fuelled the rumours last week, suggesting Dietrich Mateschitz is pushing hard for the Volkswagen-owned marque to power or even buy his struggling team Red Bull. Recently, arguably the biggest obstacle to VW’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,262,1628,5262,2341,5340,258,5107,4533,150,3392,5228],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29217"}],"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=29217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29218,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29217\/revisions\/29218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}