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Brawn: working with Ecclestone 'wouldn't have worked'

Formula 1 motorsports director Ross Brawn has said that working alongside Bernie Ecclestone would have been 'entertaining' - but wouldn't have worked in the long term.

Ecclestone was ousted as Formula 1 boss after Liberty Media's takeover went through in January. Chase Carey was appointed chief executive, with Brawn in charge of racing operations and Sean Bratches overseeing the commercial side.

Ecclestone holds the title of chairman emeritus and attended last week's Bahrain Formula 1. He said he was "helping out" the new owners but admitted that he now had little involvement in the sport.

"It would have been very entertaining to work with Bernie," Brawn told F1 Racing magazine this week.

"It wasn't impossible. But Bernie has done things in his own way over the years, and very effectively.

"I'm not sure that my philosophy of how I think it could go forward necessarily aligns with Bernie's," he explained.

"Bernie was very adept to a reactive approach. Mine is the opposite. I want to have a planned and a long-term approach.

"[Whereas] I think Bernie famously said, 'Don't plan long-term because you don't know what's going to be there when you get there.'"

Carey responds to Ecclestone's 'overcharging promoters' claim

Prior to his appointment as motorsports director, Brawn had been working with Liberty in a consultancy role. He insisted that he had never demanded that Ecclestone should be removed before he agreed to take on the permanent role.

"I couldn't work with Bernie, but I never made that a condition," he said.

Brawn said that despite his years of experience in the sport, the FIA would continue to have the final say over Formula 1.

"We believe we've [Liberty] got a role to play. We've got a right to get involved in helping shape the regulations for the future," he said. "But ultimately it's not our responsibility.

"That responsibility has to lie with the FIA, because they are the regulatory body."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.