Ecclestone: Todt should step back a little bit from Formula 1

Bernie Ecclestone believes FIA president Jean Todt should step back from the front line in Formula 1, a opinion he held for some years now.

According to the BBC, an increasingly alarmed F1 supremo told the World Motor Sport Council last week that he believes the sport is "in crisis".

"Television audiences are down", Ecclestone is reported as having informed the FIA body, "teams are struggling to survive. Something needs to be done".

After the meeting, the World Council announced that Ecclestone and Todt have been given a "mandate" to tackle many of the problems that are not being solved by the usual democratic processes.

But Ecclestone, 85, apparently thinks part of the problem is that Frenchman Todt is less hands-on and combative in his style of governing than was his predecessor Max Mosley.

"He [Todt] has been doing lots of other things, he is much more interested in road safety than Formula 1 or the sports side of things," Ecclestone told Sky Sports News.

"So maybe he should step back a little bit from formula one and let someone else take that part of the FIA's commitments over."

Ecclestone and Todt have always have fostered an unholy alliance over the years, neither fond of the other but forced exist side-by-side at the helm of the sport, with the former quick to criticise the FIA president's activities.

In 2011 when comparing Todt to his presidential predecessor Max Mosley, Ecclestone mocked, "He [Todt] has been traveling around the world doing what Max didn't do too much - kissing the babies and shaking the hands."

"We should write the rules with the teams," insisted Ecclestone at the time. "The competitors have got to race and have got a big investment. We have got a big investment. [The FIA] should be like the police - the police don't write the rules and say you've got to do 30 miles an hour. The FIA is a joke."