In an interview with Des Lynam for BBC Radio's Five Live, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone talked openly on a number of issues regarding the sport.

In response to the common charge that F1 has become boring, Ecclestone wasted no time in replying; "Rubbish," he said. "At every race, other than in Germany, attendances have been up," he revealed. "And in Germany, where the attendance was only down by around 5%, this was due to the fact that they've a little bit of a recession.

"It's one of those things," he continued. "A newspaper says 'it's boring', pretty soon someone else copies it and says 'it's boring', soon they're all saying that 'it's boring', yet they keep coming back.

"If Ali was still fighting and you knew fool well that he was going to knock his opponent out in the second round, you'd probably say 'it's going to be boring', but you'd still go watch the fight," said the Englishman.

"People say it's boring because Michael Schumacher wins, actually I'm disappointed that he lost Monaco, I wish he'd won all the races. Because then, at every race, people would be watching to see if somebody beats him. There's always that anticipation.

"Further down the field, the rest of the racing is super," he added.

On the evergreen issue of overtaking, or rather the lack of it, Ecclestone, once again, had a ready reply. "It's dangerous," he said.

"It is something we're looking into," he then continued, "but in all honesty there are lots of different schools of thought. Some say pit-stops causing drivers to wait and do their passing in the pits, while at the same time the design of the cars makes overtaking difficult. Then there are the circuits.

"There's always a lot of passing when it rains," he said. "Another factor is the soft rubber used for the tyres, when it is worn off it causes 'marbles'. If drivers go off line onto the 'marbles' they lose grip and can go off, that's why they all prefer to stay on the racing line.

"There are quite a few things we can do," he revealed, "including introducing harder tyres, in order to make it a little easier to overtake."

On the subject of qualifying, and the ideal format, Bernie was again forthright.