It has been a boom year for Formula One, with the best world championship in its six-decade history.

For most of the season there have been five drivers in contention for the title. Mathematically there still are, with Australia's Mark Webber very much one of them.

Next year the F1 calendar will expand to 20 races, with a new grand prix in India.

In a couple of years the series will go to Russia and there are moves to revive F1 in the United States, where it has never gained strong traction but which remains the world's most important car market.

Yet the sport's undoubted supremo, diminutive Brit Bernie Ecclestone, turns 80 today without any transparent sign of a succession plan.

Ecclestone, still sporting a Beatle haircut, remains a ball of energy.

He's the consummate dealmaker, yet terribly politically incorrect.

A couple of his worst lines over the years have been that women ought to remain in the kitchen "where all whitegoods belong" and that, as a believer in dictatorship rather than democracy, Adolf Hitler was "a man who got things done".

In one sense, little has changed since Ecclestone was asked 10 years ago what would happen to F1 if anything happened to him.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said.

When the questioner insisted that we are all mortal, Ecclestone got quite indignant.

"I told you, I'm not going anywhere," he said.

Ecclestone reckons he can't understand why there's such a fuss about milestone birthdays and sees no reason why he shouldn't keep doing what he's done for 35 years or so - pull the strings in the F1 circus - for at least another decade.

Certainly he sees nothing changing in that sense until he dies.

And it seems that beyond that point he really doesn't care.

Then it will be someone else's problem - or treasure. Or both.

The son of a trawlerman, Ecclestone made his first fortune not long out of school, selling motorcycles in London.

He also dealt in second-hand cars and dabbled in motor racing - as a driver, until he realised that others were more talented and that he could make much more money from the sport in other ways.

He began managing drivers. Firstly a Welshman, Stuart Lewis-Evans, who died after a race crash. Later he managed Jochen Rindt, the Austrian who was to become F1's only posthumous world champion - killed in practice for the 1970 Italian GP but whose five wins that season still ensured him the title.

Those deaths, and that almost a quarter of a century later of Brazilian triple world champion Ayrton Senna, are among the few things that have shaken Ecclestone over the years.

He bought control of Australian Sir Jack Brabham's F1 team in the early '70s after our triple world champion retired.

In no time Ecclestone was the ringmaster of the F1 teams association, which became his power base.

His great ally was Max Mosley, a brilliant lawyer who also was a part-owner of a team in the early '70s and who became the president of the sport's governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) - and survived even after his infamous Friday afternoon sex session, although he's now gone from power.

While F1 had had charismatic champions like Argentinian Juan-Manuel Fangio and Scotsman Jim Clark, it was little more than a collection of country shows when Ecclestone moved in.

He guaranteed GP organisers around the world that 26 cars would front on the grids - and he did the deals to put it on global television.

In the process he made billions of dollars - and doled some of it off to other team owners, making them filthy rich too.

Somewhere along the line, though, it became his show rather than theirs.

Former team owner Eddie Jordan jokes that Ecclestone has sold big slices of the F1 business several times over "and never owned it in the first place".

He remains very firmly at the helm, even though private equity giant CVC is the major owner these days.

CVC needs his experience and expertise to keep generating the rates of annual growth private equity investment demands.

Which raises the very valid question of what happens when Ecclestone is no longer there.

Especially if he were to go suddenly.

The teams and participating car manufacturers would like to have a much greater say in how F1 runs - and to enjoy more of the riches it generates.

But, as Paul Stoddart - the Australian who owned the minnow Minardi team for five years - has said, the F1 team owners, in what has been branded the Piranha Club, can't even agree on what time of day it is, let alone anything more important.

Most of the car manufacturers lost interest in F1, through lack of success, and have departed.

And the majority ownership is already with CVC.

Various names have been mentioned over the years as potential Ecclestone successors.

One has been Patrick McNally, a former Autosport magazine journalist who later handled Ecclestone's sponsorship and corporate hospitality arm and was said to be the only man on earth that he truly trusted.

Another has been Flavio Briatore, the mysterious Italian who went from being a Benetton marketing genius to running that clothing empire's F1 team - and taking Michael Schumacher to the first two of his seven world titles.

Briatore has been the partner of a succession of supermodels, managed numerous drivers, including negotiating Webber's contracts in recent years, and had two stints running Renault's F1 team.

It was in that capacity that not so long ago he was given what amounted to a life ban, for instructing a driver, Brazilian Nelson Piquet Junior, to crash to create an advantage for the team's other driver, Spanish dual world champion Fernando Alonso, to win the first Singapore night GP.

Yet Briatore has been sighted at several F1 races this year, remains thick with Ecclestone - they are partners in the ownership of the Queens Park Rangers soccer club - and there are suspicions that he may take on a broad role in F1 which would enable him to be groomed to succeed Ecclestone.

Yet Briatore - and the low-profile McNally - are already in their 60s.

An outsider for the job may be Gerhard Berger, a 10-time GP winner - but never world champion - who comes from a hugely successful Austrian business family, has long been close to Ecclestone, and even closer to Red Bull energy drink tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz who bankrolls two F1 teams.

As astute as Berger usually is, he has blotted his copybook this week with the outrageous suggestion that Webber tried to take out title rivals Alonso, now with Ferrari, and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton as he crashed in the new Korean GP on Sunday.

While F1 observers increasingly wonder what will happen when Ecclestone is no longer around, to him it's all a giggle.

The Red Bull team presented him with a walking frame in Korea - with the No. 80, a front wing, a steering wheel and a button to call for Viagra.

In the spirit of things, he raised the rude finger to the cameras (as shown above, alongside Sebastian Vettel) and joked that he can't afford to retire.

"I need the money," he said.

Even after handing over a large slice of his fortune to ex-wife Slavica a couple of years back, he still has heaps - and continues to mint it.

Pressed on who should succeed him, all he offers is: "I have no idea. They should probably look out for another used car dealer!"

Martin Whitmarsh - now head of the McLaren team, consistently the main challenger to the sport's most successful and revered stable, Ferrari - says that it is far from ideal that there be no obvious heir to Ecclestone.

"Those of us who are still around, if we manage to survive, when he finally is no longer around will have to find a way to bring it together," Whitemarsh has told Reuters.

"But he is not capable of either choosing, grooming or trusting a successor, frankly."