Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Ecclestone praised for early payment support

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley has praised Bernie Ecclestone for financial support prior to the start of the season.

Ecclestone delivered advanced payments to a number of teams which have been struggling financially, with Force India, Lotus and Sauber all having called for change to the way revenues are distributed in the sport last year. With Force India only running its 2015 car for the first time during final test due to supplier issues, Fernley says Ecclestone has been open to helping the smaller teams.

“We need some additional support, it’s the same questions that we’ve been asking since Austin,” Fernley said. “So that support is still needed for the independent teams.

“Bernie’s working really hard for it, in all fairness to him I think he’s taken it very seriously. Bottom line is Bernie’s a racer at heart and he understands when teams have difficulties and they’re genuine, and I think he appreciates that.

“He understands we’ve had a tough winter with cashflows and suppliers and all sorts of other things, resulting from the two teams [Marussia and Caterham] failing with their administration programmes.”

And Fernley explained that Ecclestone had made a payment to the teams earlier than planned in order to help with cashflow issues.

“We received our March 1 payment a few days earlier and that was very helpful to us. Our key objective is to keep that balance between our suppliers and ourselves because they just simply can’t afford to carry us. They have taken a bit hit through the other two teams failing.”

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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.