Bernie Ecclestone is the undisputed ringmaster of the Formula 1 circus. Officially he is president of the Formula One Constructor's Association (FOCA), representing the interests of the teams, and vice-president of Promotional Affairs of the Federation Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), the governing body of the sport. But Ecclestone excercises the ultimate authority over where the Grand Prix races are held, who organizes them, and how much it will cost them to do it. He is widely experienced in the latter aspect, since he personally "owns" several of the events on the calendar. Few begrudge him that because Ecclestone's efforts are largely responsible for transforming Grand Prix racing from a relatively amateur pursuit into a polished professional enterprise of global proportions. Under his guidance it has become the most expensive sport in the world, a showcase for big budget sponsors and a highly lucrative business for its practitioners.
Small in stature (he was once described by the dimunitive journalist Denis Jenkinson as being, 'like myself, about half actual size.'), Ecclestone's dapper figure can be seen darting about pressroom, pit lane and paddock throughout a Grand Prix weekend, with 'Bernie' or 'Mr.E'(as most people call him behind his back, though it's often 'Mr. Ecclestone' to his face) fixing his eagle eye on everything from the state of the toilets to suspicious-looking passholders in the pressroom. In the wake of his passage dirty toilets are quickly made immaculate and journalistic poseurs escorted to the other side of the fence, sometimes by the man himself.
When not conducting his whirlwind inspection tours Ecclestone presides over his domain from behind the tinted glass windows of his mission control centre, the FOCA motorhome in the paddock. From the vantage point of this inner sanctum he observes such things as the way people dress. Personally fastidious and always nattily attired in freshly pressed blue trousers and immaculate white shirt, it is said that he sometimes despairs at the sight of certain grubby journalists.
"Like yourself, you mean? No, I'm joking. I suppose it's something that's always there and you can't dress all the press in a uniform. In fact I'd hate to see it. The journalists should be completely individual and remote and away from everything. I don't like to see any of them wearing a shirt with a sponsor's name on it.
"Really, nothing much bothers me about the press. They're doing a job in a way that they see it should be done, as far as their newspaper or magazine is concerned. So they report in the way they think their readers want to hear things or see things. Sometimes, perhaps they're wrong, and sometimes they're right. And sometimes they hand you the truth in a funny way. But lots of times they can't get the truth, so they speculate a little.
"What I don't like about some press people is they always tend to be negative. If the sun shines, it's no good. If it's raining, it's no good, and so on. I think the majority of the press is either a little bit lazy or a little bit cautious about trying to find out the real facts. They tend to read other people's reports. Anyway, I read very little to do with motor sport. I generally know all about it before it's written. I know the facts. So the fiction doesn't bother me too much."
Journalists seeking the facts about his background from Bernard Charles Ecclestone are often led a merry chase. He is a reluctant celebrity ("The drivers are celebrities, not me. My private life is my private life."), yet in the interest of preventing more fiction being written about him he once said he was two year's younger than his sister, who refuses to reveal her age. (It is generally believed he was born in the county of Suffolk, in the year 1930. His father was a trawler captain, then an engineer, and Bernie trained as a chemist at Woolich Polytechnical where he got a BSc in Physics.)
The physical properties of racing machinery had appealed to Ecclestone from an early age and he first defied the laws of gravity in competition when he was 14, astride a grass track motorcycle at Brands Hatch. He graduated to four wheels in the 500cc Formula 3 category and raced around England in the early 1950's. Meanwhile, he began to engage in the various entrepreneurial activities that eventually brought him considerable wealth. A motorcycle spares business, which he first conducted from his mother's kitchen table, blossomed into a chain of bike distributorships that became the second largest in the UK. His Weekend Car Auctions enterprise was sold to British Car Auctions at a hefty profit and his forays into property development were equally lucrative.
Less successful was his first venture into Formula 1 team ownership, when he purchased the Connaught equipe. The cars were uncompetitive and a certain B.C. Ecclestone failed to qualify a Connaught-Alfa for the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix. In that year also Ecclestone's good friend Stuart Lewis-Evans was killed during the Grand Prix of Morocco and Bernie dropped out of mainstream racing for the next 10 years. He returned to run a Formula 2 Lotus team with Jochen Rindt, befriended the Austrian and was acting as his manager in Formula 1 when Rindt was killed in a Lotus at the Italian Grand Prix in 1970. The deaths of his friends caused Ecclestone to seriously question his involvement in racing.
"I was very close to both of those people, you know...had a great respect for them. And it seemed to me such a waste of life, particularly the way they both died. Both incidents were tragic ...where they shouldn't have died. And for me it was a case of asking: What am I doing here?"
It was a short dilemma for Ecclestone as he bought Jack Brabham's team (for $600,000) in 1970 and kept it for 18 years. "I bought it so I could retire from business and enjoy things. It didn't quite work out that way, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Compared to what I do now, it's more satisfying, I suppose, to own a race team, especially if it's a successful race team as mine was. But even then, I was always in trouble because I was running the FOCA side of things as well. So I was always under an awful lot of pressure. Perhaps if I had nothing else to do except run a race team it probably would be much more enjoyable than the things that I have done. More relaxing.
"Now I get a different kind of satisfaction. I get satisfaction from trying to improve everything all the time. Sometimes I wish I had more free time. Then when I get it, I wish I hadn't got it. But I have three daughters, a teenager in school, another nearly of school age and a baby. So, you see, I must have some free time to have achieved that!"
Ecclestone is artistically-minded and mentions architecture as a field of interest which he might one day pursue in more depth. His London mansion (purchased from Adnan Kashoggi for a reported $30 million) contains many works of art, among them a collection of netsukes, small toggles fashioned from ivory and wood. He designed the Brabham spitting cobra insignia and his aesthetic concerns extend beyond the sartorial presentation of the journalists to the image of the circus as a whole.
"Gradually I'm getting to all the people involved and they understand what I'm trying to do. The organizers are now as conscious as I am of making sure their circuits, the paddocks and all the areas, are nicely presented, the toilets are clean and so on, so we've got a Class A act.
"The teams and the drivers that compete, although they really are in showbiz, they're not very showbizzy people. They're low profile people, really. They just want to get on and race their cars. But like other forms of racing, particularly in America, the sport is becoming more glitzy and show biz and a little less sporting. Formula 1 is more exclusive, perhaps like ballet as opposed to some other form of dance. And for the hundreds of millions of people that follow Formula 1 racing, that's what they want. So if we try to change that image, we'd probably lose everything.
"Everybody says the old days are the best, don't they. That's because as you get older you like to think the old days were the good old days. But I don't think that way. I think each era has got it's own special thing. Years ago, you'd buy a pair of shorts and some plimsols, if you like, and you'd run a marathon. And now you see all the people running in high tech shoes and uniforms with sponsors names on them. If they play tennis, they've got high tech racquets. The same with golf and other sports. So this is something that's inevitable. This sport, because of it's high visibility, attracts people who want to put money in, to get coverage from it for advertising. It's not better or worse, just a change.
"Really, I think this is quite an infectious environment. And it seems the people that get involved, stay involved. For anybody who is a bit competitive, you get instant results, so you know how bad or good your job is on a Sunday afternoon. Then you move on to a different challenge, different race track, a whole different set of circumstances presented to you in another couple of weeks.
"We're all here for the competition and the business factor doesn't change that. Business is about competition and competition is about racing. I wouldn't do this unless I wanted to. I think I would only stop when I no longer wanted to be involved in any type of business. And contrary to general belief, I'm not motivated by money.
"I'm motivated by trying to do what I'm doing, and doing it well. That's what motivates me. If I was ever to decide to stop doing this I would make sure everything, from my point of view, was in good order for everybody else. I'm conscious of the fact that I need to tidy up everything in case anything terrible happens, if I need to retire, or am forced into retirement because I stop breathing!"
In the pressroom, along pit lane, in the paddock, it seems everyone has opinion about Bernie Ecclestone. And what does he think of all the Grand Prix people?
"They're all a bit mad! That's all!"
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