Formula One makes a habit of crisis, of scandal, of drama. Attention is a drug, after all, and it's about the only drug there is as addictive as the adrenaline that fuels the sport at every level.

From the sexual peccadilloes of one of the sport's most high-profile figures - revealed exactly a week before the F1 circus would race in Bahrain, then the most conservative country on the sport's calendar - to the frequent outbursts of foot-in-mouth disease from the man who runs it all, Formula One is even better at attracting bad publicity than it is at designing race cars.

For most observers, the 2014 F1 season has been like a slow-motion accident: we can see the crash coming, but we're powerless to do anything more than stand on the sidelines screaming, hoping for a last-minute save.

Money problems are money problems. They've always been there, and while this season has seen the collapse of two teams bankrupted by ever-escalating costs, it is reasonable - if rather heartless - to say that such cycles have long formed part and parcel of the sport's history.

The single biggest problem facing Formula One in 2014 has been the commercial rights holder, with a number of his pet teams coming in a very close second.

Despite having voted - alongside former crony Max Mosley - to introduce 2014's hybrid power units back in the days when Mosley still ruled the roost at the FIA, in the intervening years Bernie Ecclestone decided that he didn't like them after all. Before pre-season testing had got underway, Ecclestone had already passed negative comment on the sound of the new engines, despite the fact that his only experience of hearing them at that point was on a dyno run.

Once the 2014 cars had taken to the track - still unheard by Ecclestone, who does not bother with winter testing and who didn't arrive in Melbourne in time to hear the cars run in practice on Friday - the F1 boss used his position of power to rubbish the new technology while inciting allies such as Ron Walker to do the same. Instead of the good publicity our exciting technological developments deserved - and which should have a attracted a new generation of sponsors to the sport - Ecclestone pulled a Ratner.

Joining in on the chorus of complaint were a number of senior paddock figures each labouring under the misapprehension that they were the sole heir to Ecclestone's throne. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when that gift horse is holding the keys to a multi-billion dollar kingdom.

Not only did the negative publicity led by Ecclestone hamper sponsorship opportunities the length of the grid, but recent seasons have seen the F1 supremo scupper a number of high-profile deals arranged by teams. Why pay for title-sponsorship with a team who cannot guarantee a set number of televised hours per season when sponsorship of the sport as a whole sees the commercial rights holder guarantee a certain level of broadcast exposure through the use of trackside - and on-track CGI - signage? Ecclestone always knows which deals are on the verge of being signed, as it is FOM who prints the VIP passes for every team guest, with lists of attendees and the businesses they represent supplied well in advance of each race...

As costs increase - thanks partly to the commercial rights holder's desire to explore the depth of pockets in pastures new around the world, but also now partly due to those power units so loathed by the 84-year-old - and sponsors diminish, teams find it harder and harder to find the money to go racing.

That may be their problem, and their problem only, but it never used to be. Ever since Bernie Ecclestone transformed Formula One into the global behemoth it is today, he has not been shy of coming to the rescue of floundering teams. With strings attached, of course.

The big teams now profit from having sold their long-term commitment to the sport (those oh-so-fair CCB payments), and sing in sweet harmony from the F1 boss' hymn sheet of choice, but in times past it was cheaper and just as effective to offer financial lifelines to struggling outfits whose gratitude could be repaid in times of political need. But such rescue packages are off the table now, with Ecclestone saying in Sao Paulo that he wasn't in the business of running a charity. (I paraphrase.)

By giving his own sport negative publicity, failing to help ensure its long-term survival by protecting those teams like Sauber with short-falls on the balance books yet a long and rich history in both motorsport and Formula One, and scooping up sponsors on the verge of providing those teams financial lifelines, Ecclestone is the greatest threat faced by Formula One in the present day.

Nothing is too big to fail. No bank, no sport, no team. And no one is too big to be replaced. The world's cemeteries are filled with indispensable men, after all...

By Kate Walker

Kate Walker is a senior F1 writer for Crash.net. A member of the F1 travelling circus since 2010, she keeps an eye on the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing that makes Formula One a political melodrama.