Ecclestone Must Change, Says BMW Boss

Williams' engine partner BMW could walk away from Formula One if Bernie Ecclestone fails to change his management style, according to board member Burkhard Goeschel.

He also reminded Formula One's governing body, which has proposed some of the most sweeping changes in the sport's history from 2008, not to take major carmakers such as BMW for granted.

"We are committed to motorsports," he told Reuters. "It's not a question of Formula One. If Formula One is going another way which is not congruent to our ideas and values as BMW, then we would change to another kind of motorsport.

"We are not fixed on Formula One. We want to race in the top league, that's the only question. If it is attractive and interesting for us...we will stay in Formula One. But if it is not, then we won't do it."

Goeschel said commercial supremo Ecclestone had done good things for Formula One and turned it into a cash-generating global spectacle. Now, he added, transparency was essential.

Different Styles

"We have such things as corporate governance and so on and Formula One cannot be handled in its own way because the different styles of management don't fix to each other any more," he added. "In my opinion if Formula One is going to have a future, it has to change as a style of management. It has to be organised like an industrial company.

"If you continue in the same way as it is today, we cannot come together as car manufacturers or as sponsors with this kind of management. If things change to a modern style of management, an industrial style of management, then Formula One becomes, in our opinion, secure. If not, nobody knows what is happening."

Ecclestone, 73, has a 100-year contract for Formula One's commercial rights but his style of management has been described as dictatorial. There is no obvious successor lined up to take over whenever he departs. The carmakers have been negotiating with Ecclestone for a stake in the sport's future after threatening to set up their own series from 2008.

However, the talks between Ecclestone's SLEC holding company and the GPWC group of five major carmakers, of which BMW are one, suffered a serious setback last Friday when a memorandum of understanding between them was terminated.

But Goeschel said it was premature to talk of the carmakers going full steam towards their own series.

"We closed the memorandum of understanding because we didn't see any effort from the shareholders of SLEC to realise the task they have," he said.

"Now we are waiting. We want to keep it open, to see the reactions and not to close it with an argument and race our own series. There is room for discussion. If nothing happens, it (a new series) may be one solution."

Goeschel confirmed one of the sticking points in discussions with Ecclestone was the carmakers' inability to make long-term commitments.

"We cannot make a 10-year contract because racing is not our first purpose as a business. We are developing cars, we are selling cars," he said. "We are thinking in one-year time schedules, maybe two. We have to be flexible in this way."

However he added: "It's one of the most important questions but, in my opinion, it's the wrong discussion because if Formula One is attractive the question would not be raised.

"The question is how to make Formula One attractive and making it attractive is to have a long view beyond 2007 and the industrial kind of management."