Ecclestone plans 20-race 2011 schedule

The event in New Delhi is already pencilled in, and Ecclestone has made it clear that all the current venues will also keep their slots.

When asked in Bahrain if there was going to be 20 races, he said: "Why, do you want more? It's a round number and easy to remember."

Ecclestone also said that he was still keeping an eye on an opportunity to get Formula 1 back into the United States - on the back of comments from Mario Andretti that the natural place for it would be Indianapolis.

Asked for his opinion on whether or not Indianapolis was the best place for it, Ecclestone said: "Yeah, it is. It's only the fact that it's all the wrong crowd and the wrong people and they didn't really... nothing worked there really, we'd have to have a big change round. But we'd like to get back there."