Silverstone hits back at Ecclestone

But Rob Bain, chief executive of Octagon Motor Sports, the company with the rights to the event, declined to apologise and laid the blame at Ecclestone's door.

"Was it our fault that he did not request a driver to come across from Silverstone to fetch him?" queried Bain. "His car approached the circuit without displaying any passes. Was it our fault he did not request circuit passes? Or that he did not request advice on a route?

"We don't allow vehicles at the south end of the circuit, just customers on foot. So obviously his car moved slowly through the pedestrians. If he had gone along the improved Dadford Road/A43 to the main entrance he would have got in far quicker. Both Max Mosley [ president of motorsport's world governing-body] and Octagon executives from America got over from Turweston without difficulty.

"I respond well to fair criticism. I'm the first person to stick my hand up if things go wrong. But if it's unfair, I feel quite strongly about it. This is unfair."

When Ecclestone reached his personal motorhome in the Silverstone paddock at 10.30am, he sent word of his anger to Octagon's offices at Brooklands.

Bain came over to the motorhome at once to hear the story at firsthand but Ecclestone was not available. Ecclestone's embarrassment was compounded when one of his guests, the multi-millionaire promoter Harvey Goldsmith, called the facilities a "bloody joke".

"It's totally disorganised," fumed Formula One's ringmaster. "It's worse this year than it's ever been. The public here are treated in a very shabby way. The people are paying a lot of money to be looked after, and it isn't happening.

"We [Formula One Management] put in £20 million and it still hasn't happened. They say they built new roads to make it easier - but there are no signs and cars are everywhere, going in the wrong direction.

"If their contract was up next year, I wouldn't get too excited about it. I've driven all around the perimeter and the only sign I've seen was one reading 'Silverstone exit'. That says it all."

But Bain refuted Ecclestone's implication that the future of the race was under threat.

"How?" he demanded. "We have a contract until 2010. It cannot be broken either by relocating, or by removing the race from the world championship calendar.

"We want this event to be the best in Europe. If there are problems with signage I want to know, which is why we gave out 1,500 customer questionnaires this weekend.

"Only seven per cent said it was not good. But we will be writing to them to find out what improvements we could make. Bernie is one of that seven per cent. We won't be sending him a standard letter. He warrants more than that."

The row overshadowed Michael Schumacher's 60th grand prix victory. It was the fourth 1-2 of the season for the Ferraris of Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. While he could capture his fifth world drivers' title in record time at Magny Cours two weeks hence, more likely it will come at his home grand prix one week after that, still before July is out.