MOTORSPORT: Briatore back in F1 wings

The first is his criminal trial in Germany that could land the 83-year-old in jail for up to 10 years. The other, and which will be troubling him more, is the decline in television audiences in many key markets for the new era of quiet, hybrid F1 cars.

In the criminal case, in which the US$44 million he admits he paid to banker Gerhard Gribkowsky (already jailed) is alleged to have been a bribe, he has the best lawyers money can buy representing him. That case, it seems, will have to run its course, likely until October.

In the other matter, that of F1's attractiveness to fans, Ecclestone has a solution. Or at least a man he thinks can bring a solution -- Flavio Briatore.

Yes, that Flavio Briatore run out of the sport five years ago for fixing the first Singapore Grand Prix in 2008. Running the Renault factory team at that time, Briatore was found to have ordered one of his drivers, Brazilian Nelson Piquet junior, to crash in the race to help his other driver, Fernando Alonso, win it - which the Spanish dual world champion (now with Ferrari) duly did.

The 26 members of the World Motor Sport Council deemed the scandal of "unparalleled severity" and banned Briatore for life. The council said it had "compromised the integrity of the sport [and] endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Piquet".

In the media it was called one of the worst examples of premeditated cheating in sporting history.

But a few months later a French court overturned the ban and even granted Briatore a little compensation. The ban was portrayed as a last, vengeful act of former Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president, and fellow long-time Ecclestone associate, Max Mosley.

The FIA was going to appeal the French court's decision, but the parties settled out of court.

Briatore has a history of getting harsh decisions against him extinguished. It happened a couple of times in his native Italy, in the 1980s before he bobbed up in F1, after he was convicted of multiple frauds but never served the prison terms to which he was sentenced.

Briatore first attended a GP in Adelaide in 1988 and he was soon running the Benetton team with which Michael Schumacher won the first two of his world championships, before fleeing to Ferrari to claim another five. Briatore managed the careers of several other F1 drivers at times too, including Australian Mark Webber.

The Italian was always a controversial figure, but Ecclestone loved his marketing panache. He railed against the huge amounts of money spent on technology that the fans could not see or appreciate. Instead, he said F1 had to be entertainment.

Briatore has been largely out of view in recent years, apart from co-owning Queen's Park Rangers soccer club with Ecclestone and Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal for a while. He's married to Wonderbra model Elisabetta Gregoraci (after flings with Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum), is mates with Silvio Berlusconi and his super-yacht was seized a while back in an Italian tax evasion case.

He had a bit to say, probably at Ecclestone's instigation, after this year's Australian GP -- the first with the  hybrid cars. Briatore said it had been wrong that car manufacturers had succeeded in having rules introduced that produced "greener" engines that use less fuel.

"They delegated the writing of rules to engineers who do not care about the fans or entertainment," he said.

"If F1 does not change again in the near future then the audience will be lost. Look at the comments on the internet, in blogs, on Twitter - they did not like the Australian GP. It was an indecipherable and depressing show.

"This is unacceptable and now we have chaos."

A few weeks ago Briatore piped up again, lamenting cars that "do not make a noise", "save fuel" and castigating what he branded "fake overtaking".

"I do not like the new F1. It's not our F1," he said.

"It is no longer a sport of gladiators. It is a sport of accountants."

Viewers of the past couple of GPs, and particularly Ricciardo's dices with Alonso, widely regarded as the best driver in the sport, would disagree with Briatore about the lack of gladiatorial conflict. There has been a lot of great racing this season, albeit without the decibels that were F1's trademark.

The TV audiences have been down in many key markets and attendances at some races poor too, most noticeably at the German GP 10 days ago.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo suggested a summit of F1 stakeholders a while back. FIA president Jean Todt has supported that idea, although he does not see the crisis others do.

"Hybrid is the right way. We haven't communicated it well ... [but] motor racing is in good health," Todt has said.

Ecclestone wants the subject "workshopped" too. He's determined the hybrid machines be made to sound like F1 cars of bygone eras. An attempt to produce a simple trumpet exhaust on this year's dominant Mercedes car failed dismally.

Ecclestone let it be known at last weekend's Hungarian GP that a new working group was being set up to look at ways of F1 regaining its popularity. He had a meeting with the team bosses and told them of his plan for a summit and that he intends to have Briatore, now 64, there.

It's not clear whether it's exactly the same summit Montezemolo and Todt are talking about.

Ecclestone and Montezemolo are largely on the same page on this issue, but Todt will strongly resist any move to diminish the "green" revolution.

And then there's the question of whether those other two key players, and other stakeholders, will welcome or accept Briatore back in the thick of F1.

Probably not unanimously.