From BBC SportWith the new season just three weeks away, Ecclestone has also proposed the introduction of a controversial computer-generated sprinkler system to spice up boring races with artificial rain.
"I'm happy to make it happen," he insisted. "I've got to get everyone to fall into line. My idea is that we should make a programme but that nobody knows exactly which one will be used.
"At some time during the race it will be raining, maybe rain more than once. It's a bit more than a sprinkler system.
"We always have thoughts to do what we can to keep people entertained, we're in the entertainment business."
What is it about wet races that makes them exciting? The greasy surface and increased overtaking certainly plays a part. What creates that increased overtaking though...? Why did the Korean GP have 37 passes to the Chinese GP's 82 last year?
The answer can be found in the first few laps on the lap chart:
It is clear that in the race, many of the drivers pitted for wets - wrongly:
The exciting wet races are often created by the indecision caused by a wet race - the extremely professional people taken outside their comfort zone, the strategists proving that:
F1 has some great minds but collectively they become one huge numpty.
What will kill this unpredictability in the wet is giving the teams a sprinkler under the tracks to do it. How do a team know now whether inters are the right option? They don't, but with this the teams will be able to postulate that as soon as the sprinkler goes on, they may as well pit, because Bernie's not going to turn it off for at least 10 laps.
I hope he doesn't mean that he'll tell them "we're going to turn on the sprinklers at lap 10, 20 or 30". It'll be bloody obvious if they're not on at lap 20, won't it.
F1 won't understand my objection to this, but whats to stop Bernie fabricating a result if a team that Bernie wants to win aren't winning. Just tell
Pictured above: A random team
I'm sorry, this idea, already insanely artificial, is a bad one. The excitement of a wet race is as much in the seeing the professionals look like morons and to see someone take the wrong call to me, as it is about the racing.
There is no sprinkler system in the world good enough to replicate that feeling.