Well, he might not have said quite that, but sort of. I shall explain.

Bernie Ecclestone confirmed to The Times that he wants a medal system for the 2009 Formula 1 championship, with the winner of most gold medals crowned champion.

Under that system, Felipe Massa - with six wins to Lewis Hamilton’s five - would have won this year’s world title. So Ecclestone is saying that Massa should have won the championship, he’s better than Hamilton, and that Hamilton’s rubbish. That definitely what he’s saying.

Anyway, would medals be a good idea? It would encourage drivers to really go for the win; but it would also be a kick in the pants for drivers outside the top three in each race, as they’d get nothing. That’s why the points system was changed some years ago to award points to 8th place rather than just 6th.

The constructors’ championship would be unaffected, so there would still be rewards for consistency - just not really for drivers. But on balance, I think it would be a good thing. Formula 1 needs drastic changes, and this is certainly less stupid than a standard engine.

But one of Ecclestone’s incidental assertions is bizarre: “Everybody understands gold medals and silver and bronze. Nearly all sports are done that way.” Really? Nearly all? Silly man.

An appearance from Lewis Hamilton has been confirmed for the Race of Champions next month. Interestingly, he’ll be in a Mercedes car of some sort, racing against Olympic gold medal winning cyclist Chris Hoy on a bike of some sort.

While that sounds interesting and a bit of fun, it suggests that he might not be taking part in the main competition. If so, that’ll disappoint David Coulthard, who wanted to contest the Nations Cup with Hamilton, to “ride on his coat-tails and win something.”

I hope Hamilton will be racing against everyone else though. If not, it will only add to the impression that either he or his management consider him better than other drivers. Which he isn’t.

UPDATE

Hamilton won’t be taking part in the main competition, as he will be leaving early to attend the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Hmm, okay.

Renault has confirmed that Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet are being retained for 2009. Renault would always have wanted to keep Alonso - indeed it’s a two-year deal for him - and with few other drives left, it was looking inevitable that he would stay with the team. Piquet is more of a surprise, given his variable performance, but recent improved results must have convinced the team to give him a second season.

So there are only three seats yet to be filled. Jenson Button hasn’t got a confirmed pal at Honda - if he’s even staying there, which seems assumed though not official. It’s looking like either Rubens Barrichello or GP2 runner-up Bruno Senna.

The other two are at Toro Rosso. Sebastian Vettel is off to Red Bull Racing, and I still think GP2 driver and Red Bull Racing test driver Sébastien Buemi will take his place. Sebastien Bourdais is being made to wait for a decision on whether his services will be retained, following a poor start to the season, but better performances of late. I think he’ll be staying on for a second season, though for me there’s a chance that Takuma Sato could take the seat from him, due to Red Bull’s desire to increase their exposure in Asia.

Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton has echoed Heikki Kovalainen by practically pledging his life to McLaren. Unlike Kovalainen, the team probably feel the same about Hamilton.

So I’ve lost my final bet of the season, as Lewis Hamilton first looked to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, but then snatched victory from those new jaws of defeat, and beat Felipe Massa to take the Formula 1 world championship.

It was an emotional roller-coaster of a viewing experience. Before the final spell of rain, I was resigned to Hamilton doing just enough to take the title. When he fell back after the tyre changes - or not in the case of Timo Glock - I was literally jumping up and down; other people were less excited. When Hamilton passed Glock to take fifth in the last couple of corners of the race, I was satisfied - I’d lost my bet, but it was an extraordinarily exciting end to a generally quite exciting race.

But what made it all worthwhile was seeing the news hit the prematurely celebrating Ferrari garage. I bear the team no ill will, but seeing their faces turn was pure television gold. I thought Massa acquitted himself very well in the post-race press conference, however.

So, what of world champion Lewis Hamilton? I’ve nothing against the guy, but I’m not impressed by his guarded initial response to journalists - though neither am I surprised.

As Murray Walker suggested, Hamilton is the first manufactured Formula 1 driver. And that’s how he comes across: too corporate, which is no surprise - because McLaren’s as clinically corporate a team as you’ll find, at least superficially.

To my mind, the world champion has a responsibility to be an ambassador for the sport - a role exemplified by one Valentino Rossi. He is the world champion by which all other should be judged. But I can see Hamilton being more like Fernando Alonso - who gave little more of himself than he was contractually obliged to.

But we’ll see. I was generally of the opinion that Hamilton could do with another season of disappointment, but maybe with success will come something more of a personality. And to be fair, would Massa have been a more interesting world champion?

It being ITV’s last Formula 1 race, there had to be a celebratory montage. A montage is bad enough in itself, but drivers, presenters and other paddock folk miming along with ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ by My Chemical Romance was a new all-time low. Steve Ryder acknowledged the awfulness, but that doesn’t excuse it.

It was worse, even, than the orchestrated ‘chat’ between Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen early this season, clearly designed to show that Hamilton can get on with a teammate, after all the fuss with Fernando Alonso last season. Someone should have watched it and realised it was unfit for human consumption before broadcast.

One good thing did come out of the montage, however: the similarity of reporter Ted Kravitz and BMW boss Mario Theissen. Scary.

So, next season: back to the BBC. Rumour has it Martin Brundle will keep his job, and be joined by former BBC Radio 5 Live commentator Jonathan Legard; David Coulthard will replace Mark Blundell as pundit, and Jake Humphrey - CBBC, Fame Academy, various sports coverage - will assume the role of presenter. But we’ll see - an announcement can’t be far off.

Everyone seems to have advice for Lewis Hamilton, ahead of the title-deciding final round of the Formula 1 championship in Brazil on Sunday. Not that any of it’s much use.

Eddie Jordan has grabbed headlines with some extremely emotive language. Whether he genuinely believes his conspiracy theories or not, they make interesting reading. Hamilton “needs to be careful” because “right now the world is against him.” Jordan talks about the possibility of Massa trying to “steal the title” by taking Hamilton out, in which case, “Lewis has to turn his wheel into Massa to ensure he does not finish the race either – he has to take his wheel off.” Calm down, Eddie - really, it’s only motorsport.

The advice of John Surtees is more straightforward: “He has to forget about the championship and think about the race.” Thanks, John.

Surprisingly, Juan Pablo Montoya’s words of warning are probably more practical: “If Felipe comes anywhere near him, I would let him by.” He then goes on about not needing to win the race and so on.

Ross Brawn probably isn’t wrong, but his thoughts - “you cannot advise a driver” - are hardly helpful.

So I’ll stick with Mercedes bonce Norbert Haug: “All the talking is just wasting energy… you have to be concentrated on your car and you have to be bloody on it!” Well said, that man.

If the FIA’s plan for a standard engine in Formula 1 is just their way of pushing the teams to finalise cost cutting measures, then they’re doing a good job of making people take it seriously.

Yesterday the FIA reiterated its intention, and revealed that there are several interested parties. It is believed, however, that current Formula 1 teams - as members of FOTA (Formula One Teams Association) - have agreed not to apply. It’s obvious that they’re not keen, and it’s becoming more obvious.

Most obvious of all is Ferrari, issuing an official statement on Monday making plain their feelings: a standard engine would make the board of directors “re-evaluate” the team’s involvement.

Toyota also commented, but in a less official manner, coming from team president John Howett rather than the corporate entity. The sentiment - “we don’t want a standard engine” - was clear, but he added that the decision would ultimately be taken by the board in Japan.

So what happens now? We sit, wait, and hope for a full-on war of words. Because that’d be a lot of fun.

UPDATE

The FIA has responded to Ferrari’s statement:

“It seems the Ferrari Board were misinformed. The FIA has offered the teams three options, one of which is the so-called standard engine, and another that the manufacturers should jointly guarantee to supply power trains to the independent teams for less than €5m per season.”

Well, that makes the FIA’s motives very clear: the threat of a standard engine is the FIA’s way of forcing the manufacturers to supply independent teams with cheaper engines.

Now: fight!

I like Ross Brawn. He seems a reasonable chap, and apparently he’s quite good at all that strategy lark Formula 1 types enjoy so much. But oh dear. Talking about Honda’s testing plans, autosport.com quotes Brawn as saying:

“We have got a full test over the winter with a whole myriad of parts.”

No! You have “myriad parts”; “myriad of parts” is nonsense, sir. Nonsense!

Clearly the man’s an idiot.

When Max Mosley mentioned the idea of a standard engine in Formula 1 last week, it was widely believed to be nothing more than a hot poker up the backside of the teams; a hurry up to finalise cost cutting measures. But today they’ve only gone and invited tenders to supply a standard engine for three years from 2010, then clarified it a bit.

The plan appears to be this: one supplier designs and builds an engine; teams can then either take that complete engine, or - the clarification - build their own engine from that exact design. Bernie Ecclestone said he can’t see why the car manufacturers would leave as a result, because they’d be saving money.

Let’s take Ecclestone’s point first. The idea of a standard engine is to eliminate performance advantages, which are exactly what manufacturers want to demonstrate. Quite apart from that: is, for example, Ferrari going be willing to race with a Renault engine? For reasons of branding, marketing and simple pride, it seems deeply unlikely. The option to assemble it themselves is an utter irrelevance, unless I’ve misunderstood.

Whether it matters is a quite different question. Without engine development, teams wouldn’t necessarily need the budgets of the manufacturer teams, so their dropping out could be a good thing.

But without the manufacturer teams, some of the gravitas might be be lost. Force India isn’t quite as recognisable or highly regarded a name as Ferrari; then again, maybe Red Bull is, and the likes of McLaren and Williams have serious racing pedigree.

The IndyCar Series has a standard engine and chassis, but still attracts top sponsors and teams, and it is they who provide the recognisable names, not the Honda engine or Dallara chassis. That said, IndyCar Series is trying to get more engine manufacturers involved from 2011.

So what would Formula 1 look like with a standard engine? The best case scenario would be a dozen non-manufacturer teams, with household names as title sponsors funding the more modest budgets. But for sponsors, part of the current appeal of Formula 1 is the association with a premium brand like Ferrari. It’s hard to say which sponsors would remain interested in Formula 1, but it’s safe to say that it wouldn’t be all of them.

If Formula 1 budgets dropped as a result, the glamour - and the appeal to some fans - would be wiped out. Without intense competition from car manufacturers, the appeal to another section of fans would be wiped out.

There’s also the risk that if car manufacturers lost interest in Formula 1, they would - as has been threatened repeatedly - form their own championship. As demonstrated by the split of open wheel racing in North America in the 1990s, and the eventual unification of Champ Car and IndyCar this year, it’s not likely that this would be a good thing for anyone.

So what’s the conclusion? A standard engine would be a huge risk, with a variety of possible outcomes, under which Formula 1 could flourish, or shrivel and die. But I don’t think the standard engine will become a reality, so it’s probably all rather academic.

Having been away for a week, I missed Formula 1’s first night race in Singapore. Luckily the fall out is still being discussed, so I have an excuse to write about it.

Obviously the main event was Felipe Massa driving down the pitlane with his car’s fuelling umbilical cord flapping around. If I didn’t have money on him winning the championship, I would have laughed my teeth out. Ferrari’s electronic pit release system has proven to be just the most obvious of their blunders, in a pretty blunder-filled season for everyone.

Ferrari big face Luca di Montezemolo complained, saying that the lack of excitement apart from that generated by the safety car - and actually I thought it was quite a good race - was “humiliating for F1″. Presumably what he meant to say that his team being remarkably shit was humiliating for him.

Over the weekend, Bernie Ecclestone put the boot in good and proper, echoing pretty much everything I’ve just written - that di Montezemolo should have “kept his head down”, that the electronic pit release system is “over the top”, and that if Massa doesn’t win the championship then the team will be to blame.

Personally, I’m not so sure about that last point. The team have certainly made their share of mistakes, but so has Massa - most notably spinning repeatedly at Silverstone like a massive idiot.