Formula One news
'Briatore may have left anyway' - Ecclestone
17 September 2009Formula One commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone has hinted that friend and former Renault Team Principal Flavio Briatore may soon have departed the sport and that the recent race-fixing scandal has served solely a catalyst for the Italian's exit from F1.
Having bought into the Queens Park Rangers (QPR) football club with Briatore in 2007, Ecclestone knows the ex-team boss on both personal and professional levels but suggests that the scandal has acted a sign for Briatore to make his way out of F1 early.
"He told me recently that he didn't want to finish up like me, 'playing with racing cars' at my age," the F1 supremo told The Mirror, "so at least he's been saved that embarrassment." As the man in charge of the running of the sport's commercial aspects, including the addition of new races to the calendar and the entire television package, 78-year-old Ecclestone is confident that Formula One will make a full revival.
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"It has recovered from so many things when people have said it was finished and it will recover from this," he stressed. "It was supposed to be finished when Ayrton Senna died. It was supposed to be finished when Michael Schumacher retired. It has been finished so many times that it's difficult to know when it really will stop but I don't think it will be now.
"People say it's been a torrid year but it always is in F1; there's always something going on, it's never peaceful.
"It is a pity that Flavio has ended his Formula One career in this way; you can't defend him at all, what he did was completely unnecessary, but it's a pity that it's happened. Sometimes good things come out of bad - at least he'll have more time to pick the (football) team now."
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