F1: Bernie Ecclestone takes ChiefOfficers.Net joke seriously

We had the idea in our conversazioni fittizie section - it's the place where some wag in the office makes up fictional conversations. And it was a fictional conversation between Ecclestone and Jean Todt, newly installed as the boss at the FIA.

In the fictional conversation, Bernie says "we've tried racing at dusk, we've tried racing in a monsoon and we've tried racing at night. But the only thing that really levels the teams is damp and slippery and changing conditions." The conversation goes on: "so I want to put sprinklers around the tracks and to use a computer management system to randomly turn them on and off so there are constantly changing conditions. No one will know from lap to lap what the conditions will be at any one point on the lap.

JT: sorry, run that by me again...

BE: artificial rain. Not really heavy, just enough to make it slippery at different points around the track as the race wears on.

JT: artificial rain? Are you bonkers?

BE: no more than usual."

And so we left it, a mad idea.

Except that BBC Sport is today reporting that Ecclestone has told them "I thought maybe at the beginning it was a little crazy [to suggest the use of sprinkler systems on F1 tracks] but it's surprising how much support that idea is getting now. Providing we do it so nobody would know when it was going to happen, like when it rains."

The original article - published 30 March 2010 - is at conversazioni fittizie: F1's Ecclestone on new track requirements