All the cars have been launched, testing is underway but Bernie Ecclestone says F1 is the worst it has ever been.

Yep, you read that right, Bernie Ecclestone – the man in charge of F1 – says that he wouldn’t pay to take his family to F1. Even more bizarrely, Ecclestone has also compared the sport to a cartel…

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Ecclestone unleashed some alarming ranting. He regards FIA President Jean Todt as too keen to preserve the status quo, while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he says should be the man to run Europe!

Bernie also questions the current spectacle of F1, asking what the point is when you know Lewis Hamilton will probably be on pole and win the race while ‘the other Mercedes’ (or Nico Rosberg, as he’s better known) will probably finish second. It’s a little odd that the thought never came to him when it was Seb Vettel and Red Bull – or Michael Schumacher and Ferrari…

Fans of F1 may be a little open-mouthed in shock at this point. An incredibly complex money chain effectively puts Ecclestone in charge of the sport as a whole, along with a ruling in December from the FIA World Council that gave Ecclestone and Todt the power to do whatever they wanted to change it. To see him damning the very thing he controls will be a little hard to believe.

As ever, Bernie’s comments are exceedingly inflammatory and perfectly-timed to cause as much disruption amongst the teams that can oppose him as possible. Ironic, given that his rise to power was on the back of a teams’ association in the 1980s…