No alternative venues for British GP

On Sunday, Ecclestone blamed Silverstone circuit owners, the British Racing Drivers' Club, for blocking planning permission for Brands Hatch's plans back in 2000 for a £20million all-new track layout to host the 2002 event. He also doubted that Donington Park owner Tom Wheatcroft, who held the European GP in 1993, has the requisite funding to revamp the east Midlands track back to F1 standard.

"If the BRDC hadn't have got together to campaign for two years against Brands, Octagon [now Brands Hatch Circuits] would have got planning consent and this race would have been at Brands Hatch," said Ecclestone. "A new fantastic circuit would have been built, because Octagon would have spent the £8million a year they now pay in rent on a great new facility.

"They [the BRDC] did a good job of scuppering Brands and Tom probably couldn't spend the amount of money needed to build a proper circuit for F1. We are going to end up saying, 'We want to race in the UK. Okay, where do we race?'"