How F1 made its emperor powerless

So what does Bernie Ecclestone think of how Formula 1 has developed under the stewardship of Ross Brawn and his Liberty Media colleagues - and how is he dealing with life at what is for him, a leisurely pace?

As we head into the second season without his colourful presence as the undisputed ruler of F1, Ecclestone has had time to reflect upon his new status and how the business he founded has fared since his departure from his role as ringmaster of the greatest show on earth.

His job was in effect split into three, with Chase Carey and Sean Bratches focusing on the business aspects. To most people, sporting boss Brawn became the public face of what has become a more formally structured and corporate F1 organisation, far removed from the one-man band of past decades.

And it was Brawn's arrival that meant Ecclestone was ousted. The pair have a little 'history', not unrelated to some tough negotiations when Brawn was a team principal. Not surprisingly, Brawn felt he couldn't do the job properly with his predecessor still in the fold.

"Ross said, 'If you want me, Ecclestone has got to go," Bernie recalled during a meeting at his London office. "So Ecclestone went, as I was asked to go, and that was it. If they were more happy keeping him and letting me go... They were paying the money to buy the company, so it's up to them."

One of the first things Liberty did was start looking for a new base for the F1 organisation, moving it out of the Princes Gate building that had doubled as Ecclestone's London home since the 1980s.

"I think it would have been better for them if perhaps Ross hadn't dictated the terms. We could have worked together" Bernie Ecclestone

It was a logical move - apart from anything else the head count began to expand immediately, and therefore so did requirement for desk space - but the departure was heavily symbolic too, and it still rankles with Ecclestone.

"Chase has been very, very complimentary to me," Ecclestone says. "Things he's said which he probably was right about, why they had to move out of these offices. But he didn't describe it too well. He said you walk up some wobbly staircase to offices that used to be bedrooms. But they've actually never been bedrooms here, it's always been offices.

"In fact it was the offices of Mr Khashoggi, who ran a decent business," Ecclestone deadpans, referring to the Saudi arms dealer who preceded him. "That was the only thing Chase got a little bit wrong I think. Otherwise he's been very complimentary."

So how is his relationship with Carey these days?

"We don't have a lot of conversations..."

Naturally Ecclestone feels that he still had a role to play, had he not been eased out.

"I think it would have been better for them if perhaps Ross hadn't dictated the terms. We could have worked together. I'd have been happy not needing to do as much as I used to do. What talents I had could have been useful, and what talents they have, could have been useful."

Instead, overnight he was given the meaningless title of chairman emeritus, but no power, responsibility or any kind of involvement. How hard has it been to deal with that change - and what does he miss?

"I rarely stopped until the end of the races, I was always gone halfway through. I always looked it as though I've done my job, there is nothing else I can do now. So I used to leave. But what I miss is the people, I suppose, when you've been around for as long as I've been around, with all the people we knew.

"And all the things which some people are perhaps finding a bit difficult today, for me became normal and natural. Because I was in the position where I could say, 'do this, do that,' they did it, and they were happy.

"Or I could say, 'listen, why don't we do this, or what do you think about that? Come on let's do it!' Now there's 10,000 meetings with everybody before you do anything."

Ecclestone isn't invited to attend of these meetings. Is he able to keep track of what the new management is doing, and what does he think of recent developments?

"Although I'm in a super position in the company, higher than anybody, I'm so high I can't see what's going on. But people give me information on what's happening, what isn't happening.

"What do I think? The only thing you can ever think about is the alternative, isn't it? I can't suddenly say I think it's good, or I think it's bad. If there is an alternative all you could say was maybe the alternative - in the old days - was better. And maybe it wasn't. Nobody knows.

"I ran the company as the chief executive, the idea was to run the company profitably, and make sure everything was sustainable long term, and we kept everybody on board. And that's what I used to do."

Late last year Carey noted in an address to shareholders that Ecclestone had left behind some "booby traps" for Liberty to deal with.

Carey didn't elaborate, but he was probably referencing contractual surprises he and Liberty didn't anticipate, such as a drop in revenue from the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2017. That was due to the end of a previous deal in which a subsidy from broadcaster TV Globo topped up the race hosting fee.

"This is the problem," says Ecclestone of such surprises. "We wouldn't let them do their normal due diligence. We never let anyone do it."

Over the years a lot of tyre kickers and would-be purchasers knocked on Ecclestone's door, and it's understandable they weren't made privy to the intricate web of contractual details that surrounded the business.

You might think that when the Liberty sale was about to happen the future owner was allowed to see everything it needed to see, but Ecclestone says not.

"We've had a few people happening, and then it didn't happen. It nearly didn't happen with them. They had borrow $1.5billion to buy off the last lot of shares. So why do you want them to come in and take the business to pieces when they haven't paid anything?"

Booby traps or not, Ecclestone also left a valuable legacy. The return of the French and German GPs to the 2018 calendar has been much trumpeted by Liberty, but both deals were done by Bernie.

He reveals he also played an unheralded role in persuading Singapore to extend its contract into the Liberty era: "I saved their life with Singapore," he says. "The people in Singapore wanted to stop."

Liberty has made it clear from the off that it believes F1 underperformed on Ecclestone's watch, stating that he didn't have as many sponsors as he could have, didn't exploit digital opportunities, and so on. How does he take such criticism?

"The only thing I did was make money," he responds with a shot. "The shareholders I had wanted me to make money. More importantly, they wanted me to make the company better, so they could sell it. As I was a shareholder as well, I was happy with that idea. We'd been trying to sell it for three or four years.

"My problem's always been having to make the shareholders happy. They probably haven't got as much pressure as me. If they don't have to make profits, good."

Joking aside, he insists he wants Carey and his colleagues to succeed in their ambition to grow the championship: "I've spent the biggest part of my life with what I've been doing in F1, and I'd hate to think it wasn't doing well. I'd rather be able to look back and say, 'well, I started that.'"

Ecclestone is adamant that he's now come to terms with his abrupt departure and the arrival of a new regime.

"I saved their life with Singapore. The people in Singapore wanted to stop" Bernie Ecclestone

"It's a different way of running things, a completely different way," he says. "It was probably inevitable. Sooner or later was the right time, but we don't know. I wouldn't be capable of doing the sort of things I used to do anyway, and they'd have had to find somebody else, so that's what's happened. It's like me dying, if you like, and new people taking over.

"In the end they've got to run it the way they want to run it. They've thought I haven't run it very well, so they have to show how they can run it.

"If they believe that having all these people is going to produce more income, good, it's obviously a sensible thing to do. People run businesses differently. Not everybody runs things the same way."

And does he view the fact that, in effect, it took three men to replace him as a back-handed compliment?

"It depends if you are looking for quality, or quantity..."

Although F1's emperor has been sidelined by the new regime, at 87 Ecclestone has found himself embarking on a new chapter in his long and busy life.

"I'm busier now than when I had a job," he says. "I'm doing things in Switzerland I should have been doing before. I've got developments there, property, and a hotel. And we have a few thousand acre farm in Brazil. I haven't done anything there in the past, Fabiana's dealt with that, but I can give her a bit of a hand now."

He still went to a handful of grands prix last year, and he's planning to be in Bahrain in April, but didn't go to Australia.

Ecclestone was expecting to make the trip, in part to give his wife a holiday, but mainly because he knew that Ron Walker, the Melbourne entrepreneur with whom he started the race back in 1996, was seriously ill. He wanted to catch up with his old friend for what he feared might be the last time, but sadly Walker died at the end of January, so Bernie cancelled.

"I was intending go this year. Not basically for the race, but I wanted to go there because dear old Ron had not been well, and I thought I'd pop over and see him, because we were quite close. I spoke to [his widow] Barbara, and I said I'd never go to Melbourne again without him being there.

"This year I'd promised Fabiana we'd go, because she'd never been to Australia. I said we'd stay there for a couple of days, and go to Sydney. So I've lost Ron - and Fabiana's pissed off!"

And with that our time with Ecclestone comes to and end. F1's great emperor may have lost his empire, but he still retains that wicked sense of humour.