Breakaway threat baffled Ecclestone

Although the future of F1 looks more secure on the back of teams signing a new Concorde Agreement with Ecclestone and the FIA, the sport's commercial chief is still baffled about why some outfits and their bosses were so determined to do things their own way.

"I was just telling someone the other day that most of them in Formula 1 are a bit new," Ecclestone said in an interview with Singapore's Today newspaper.

"They haven't served an apprenticeship. They just don't know what we had to go through to build things up in the beginning to what they are today. They want to take whatever they can as much as they can and disappear. A couple of them, I think, maybe thought they would like to do something else and be in charge of something.

"They are not even in charge of anything they are now doing anyway, so how they think they could be in charge of something as big as F1, I don't know. Anyway, it is their opinion."

Ecclestone reckoned that teams got carried away with the idea of a breakaway, and thinks that it would ultimately have been very hard to have taken on F1 with a rival series.

"This business is built now and it is easier to do what we are doing rather than start something again," he said. "I wouldn't want to start a series in opposition to Formula 1, for sure.

"There is no real reason for it; there is no logic in it. Just as I said to people, those who wanted to break away must have been carried away. The trouble is they are more the corporate types. This isn't a corporate business, it is an entrepreneur business."

And interestingly, Ecclestone said that should F1 have collapsed amid all the political wrangling that has marred this season, he would have walked away completely rather than try and rebuild it.

"There wouldn't be any point in staying if it collapses, would it?" he said. "I probably think it's not worth the effort rebuilding it. I've got enough energy to do many, many other things and that is what I would be doing."