'Life president' role mooted for Ecclestone

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New reports this week suggest that Formula One's longtime commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone may be made "life president" by the sport's new owners Liberty Media Group in order to move him to one side and make way for a new man at the top.

Sky Sports has reported that Ecclestone will step down as chief executive and that "an announcement could be made as soon as the first half of next week" about a successor.

Last week Liberty won final approval for its commercial takeover of the sport from both its own shareholders and from the FIA.

Liberty's Chase Carey is believed to be keen to recruit former ESPN executive Sean Bratches to replace Ecclestone on the business side of running the sport.

Former ESPN exec lined up to replace Ecclestone

former Formula One team owner Ross Brawn is also rumoured to be in line to help Bratches run the sporting aspect.

"Liberty Media is determined to demonstrate that it is taking F1 into a new era by pursuing a radical overhaul of its commercial operation," said Sky's Mark Kleinman.

"The sport's veteran boss has been offered a less hands-on role, with a title such as life president," he added.

It was originally believed that Liberty had agreed to keep Ecclestone on as F1 boss for a transition period.

But Ecclestone himself appeared to hint that he could soon be stepping down from his role in comments he made earlier this week in which he said "We need to put something together if I am not here because I have become deceased or something and it is about time we did that."

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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.