You can't compare eras. But drivers of each era adapt to the needs and climate of their time. There are good and bad points to every era of the sport. I'm not really nostalgic about the past.

Let's be realistic about that. I think Mercedes when it started the engine [development] didn't have a budget. It spent. And then lots of teams don't and can't. I mean Red Bull, for example, that won four world championships, didn't know the word "budget", and it's a case that it hadn't got the ability to have the engine that it should have had. Because somebody else [Mercedes] had the engine, wouldn't let them have it, because they didn't want competition.

It's the engine. They should have never had that. The biggest mistake people have made... I say, "people," because it wasn't just me alone, was not insisting Mercedes supply Red Bull an engine. Because had they supplied the same engine as they had, you would have seen good racing, you would have seen Red Bull up there last year.

Probably when I gave things to Slavica [ Ecclestone], you know the shares of the company, and things like that. And she put it all in trust and the trust sold the shares. Um, would I turn the clock back if I could and so I still owned the company completely? Probably yes. It probably wasn't a good decision, but it was the decision that had to be made. Was I happy that I made it? No.

I leave at half-time; by then you can see which way it's going. If you ask me to name five of our team, I couldn't. There's that guy who scores goals - Taarabt. Routledge I've heard of. All bloody nice guys but I don't mix with them so I don't know them well. I don't go in the dressing room. They can walk out of the showers and I feel I've got an inferiority complex.

I was delighted with Baku. People said I was completely mad; I was so happy when it all turned out all right.

It's the best thing to happen to a sport, that you have a superstar. In football there is always something to write about the Beckhams, same as people want to write about Rooney or Hooney or whatever his bloody name is.