Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Ecclestone wishes he could rebuild F1

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Bernie Ecclestone admits Formula One is "an old house" which he is unable to rebuild at the moment.

A number of teams remain in financial difficulties, with Ecclestone advancing a payment of £6.7million ($10million) ahead of the start of the season to help with cashflow issues for some. Following a meeting of the Strategy Group in Malaysia on Friday, Ecclestone concedes many of the current problems within the sport are due to the individual agreements he has with each of the teams which run until 2020, preventing him from implementing change.

"The trouble is we've got an old house and we keep repairing it," Ecclestone told reporters at Sepang. "It's not really the way to go. I'm a little bit frustrated, a little bit disappointed by all these problems. I'm not so much worried about it - we just need to do a lot better.''

Having previously agreed with Christian Horner's calls for Mercedes to be reined in, Ecclestone now says it us up to the other teams to do a better job.

"I've no complaints or problems about Mercedes doing what they are doing - the complaint I've got is the others are not doing the same. All Mercedes have done is a good job - they've the best engine, best chassis, best team, two of the best drivers, so they are entitled to win.

"It's the others that need to get going. No good blaming the people that are doing a good job because they're doing a good job.''

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix

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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.