Brawn: I couldn’t work with Bernie

Although Ross Brawn says he “couldn’t work with Bernie” Ecclestone, he insists that was never a condition to him taking the role of F1’s sporting boss.

When Liberty Media took control of Formula 1 at the start of the year, former Mercedes team boss Brawn was appointed to the role of head of sporting matters. He forms part of a three-man team headed up by CEO Chase Carey.

Carey’s appointment as CEO signalled the end of Ecclestone’s reign with the F1 supremo recently claiming that Brawn would not have taken the job if he stayed on.

The Englishman has denied this.

Autosport reports Brawn as having said in an upcoming issue of F1 Racing magazine: “That is not true.

“I mean, I couldn’t work with Bernie, but I never made that a condition.”

He added: “It would have been very entertaining to work with Bernie.

“It wasn’t impossible, but Bernie has done things in his own way over the years and very effectively has done things in his own way over the years.

“But I’ve never seen Bernie with any serious partners, certainly not in terms of running the business.

“He’s had people who’ve helped him with aspects of the business, but I’m not sure that my philosophy of how I think it could go forward necessarily aligns with Bernie’s.

“Bernie was very adept to a reactive approach; mine is the opposite, I want to have a planned and a long-term approach.

“I think Bernie’s famously said: ‘Don’t plan long-term because you don’t know what’s going to be there when you get there.'”