Time's up for Bernie and Max, says Canada promotor
09 April 2009
The former promoter of the Canadian Grand Prix believes that Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley, Formula One Management chief and FIA President respectively, should now be relieved of their duties in the sport.
Normand Legault, who saw his race lost from the calendar after the 2008 event, believes that Formula One does no longer need to be 'governed', and that he spoke to the teams regarding this issue last year. "I said to them 'why don't you reorganise yourselves like a North American sports league? When the Montreal Canadiens play the Boston Bruins, they don't ask the International Hockey Federation to referee the match," Legault explained to La Presse in Montreal.
"In the world of North American pro sports, each league has a board of governors, a commissioner and vice presidents who manage the business - the owners of the sport manage themselves. The teams could leave tomorrow morning - they could call it the Grand Prix World Championship. If you have Ferrari, BMW, Williams, if you have Lewis Hamilton, that seems pretty much like the real thing," he added.
Legault continued to state that the business side of F1 has too great an influence on the sport itself: "To go back to the model of the NHL, if the league administrative costs are $50 million, and overall revenues are $1.8 billion, then that amounts to 3 per cent. In F1, the guy who manages the business costs you 50 per cent of your revenues."