You are never too old to learn, so the saying goes, and at 78, Bernie Ecclestone has been taught a very valuable lesson this week.

Ecclestone is a man skilled in the art of negotiation, as shrewd an operator as they come, and he has needed to be otherwise the multi-billion pound business that is Formula One would not exist today.

And should you chance upon him, his humour is dry and pithy, almost lost at times given the deadpan nature of the delivery, but you are not to be fooled because it is often razor sharp.

Of late, though, his role as the sport's overlord has been brought into sharp focus, and questioned by many given the battle that has raged between the FIA and the Formula One Teams' Association.

It led to people wondering just how two ageing men in Ecclestone and 69-year-old FIA president Max Mosley could exert the kind of stranglehold over F1 that has had the sport on its knees of late, gasping for air.

With reference to Mosley's style of leadership in particular, the word dictatorship was used, one that continues to haunt the peace pact between the FIA and FOTA, and one that added fuel to the fire for Ecclestone's critics.

As mentioned, Ecclestone's off-the-cuff remarks have enabled him to often extricate himself from tricky situations when confronted by a journalist in the paddock armed with probing questions.

But for once, perhaps at a low ebb in the wake of his divorce and after the exhaustive nature of the FIA/FOTA war, Ecclestone was caught with his guard down.

He was dragged into a conversation that veered far from the beaten track, that on another day he would have dismissed with a short one-liner if pinned on the subject in the paddock.

But in the more relaxed surroundings of his Knightsbridge office, Ecclestone remarked of his admiration for Adolf Hitler's ability "to get things done," in the wider context of discussing dictators.

Cue the opening of a rather large can of worms.

The outrage that followed from the various Jewish communities across the world was, to say the least, understandable.

There were calls for him to resign and for the Formula One teams to boycott dealing with him, both totally unrealistic of course.

Ecclestone has apologised "unreservedly" for his remarks, not once, not twice, but in triplicate, and has described himself as "an idiot."

He did so in The Times, the newspaper in which he initially aired his views, the Jewish Chronicle and via a personal statement.

Ecclestone has since recognised his failing of not choosing his words carefully, or at least not putting them into greater context.

But then Ecclestone should never have mentioned Hitler at all, not in any context because after the atrocities he oversaw, such a man rightly remains far too sensitive a subject to far too many people.

So despite all his years of experience, Ecclestone will now know to be more selective with his remarks, to perhaps keep some thoughts to himself - or at least bat some subjects away with a trademark one-liner.