Bernie Ecclestone Read online

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my mum, a lifelong supporter and a lifelong fighter. She spent her life giving so much, seemingly getting little in return; yet she gained eternity. And to my dad, who did his best.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PREFACE

  PART 1

  1 ‘SENNA DEAD? NO, HE’S INJURED HIS HEAD’

  2 HOW AUNTIE MAY CHANGED YOUNG BERNARD’S LIFE FOR EVER

  3 THE RISE TO RICHES OF BRABHAM’S NEW BOSS

  4 THE ‘GARAGISTES’ TAKE ON THE FIA ‘GRANDIS’

  5 CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE OR POLITICAL POWER? IT’S BERNIE’S DILEMMA

  6 JEAN-MARIE BALESTRE: LE GRAND FROMAGE

  7 THE KEY TO RICHES – TELEVISION RIGHTS

  8 BRABHAM TAKEN FOR A SWISS ROLL

  PART 2

  9 BERNIE GOES WEST – AND MEETS HIS MATCH

  10 HOW CANADA LOST ITS NSA – AND BRANDS HATCH AND SILVERSTONE THE BRITISH GRAND PRIX

  11 THE BEGINNING OF BERNIE’S TELEVISION RIGHTS STRANGLEHOLD

  12 THE RISE OF PRESIDENT MAX, HOW THE FIA LOST MILLIONS, AND THE SHOWDOWN IN BRUSSELS

  13 THE SINKING OF BERNIE’S $2.5 BILLION FLOTATION PLANS

  14 BERNIE’S ANNUS HORRIBILIS

  15 BRUSSELS DELIVERS ITS VERDICT – AND BERNIE MAKES ANOTHER BILLION

  16 GOODBYE KAREL … HELLO LEO

  17 THE CASH-FOR-ASH AFFAIR

  18 MARRIAGE, MONEY AND BLACKMAIL

  19 WHAT A FUNNY OLD GAME

  20 THE ITALIAN CONNECTION

  GLOSSARY

  Copyright

  PREFACE

  A former team boss, who has known Bernie Ecclestone for many years, is talking about a controversial dispute involving a well-known motor sport figure:

  ‘Bernie once said to me, “First you have to get on, then you get rich, and then you get honest. The trouble with – is that he’s still trying to get rich.”’

  We have not the liberty to choose whether we will serve or not; the only liberty we have is to choose the master we shall serve.’ Anon

  PART 1

  1

  ‘SENNA DEAD? NO, HE’S INJURED HIS HEAD’

  The out-of-control Williams-Renault FW16 hit the concrete wall during the eighth lap of the San Marino Grand Prix at an estimated impact speed of 137mph. By the time the car had come to rest 1.8 seconds later, during the third round of the 1994 Formula One World Championship, the life of three times world champion Ayrton Senna was rapidly ebbing away. In less than two minutes, paramedics were at the scene cutting through his chin-strap to remove his helmet, from beneath which blood flowed freely, while at the same time intravenous infusions were intubated into his lifeless body.

  Professor Sid Watkins, one of the world’s leading neurosurgeons and Formula One’s on-track surgeon for 16 years, rotated a plastic tube deep into Senna’s trachea to establish an airway. As he lifted Senna’s eyelids, the tell-tale signs of his pupils told Watkins that the world’s most talented Formula One driver had suffered a massive brain injury, caused, an inquest later recorded, by the impact of the right-front wheel and the right-front suspension arm piercing his helmet at the edge of the visor opening. Watkins, a keen motor-racing fan since his teens, knew Senna could not survive such devastating injury.

  The 34-year-old Brazilian was lifted carefully from the cockpit and laid on the ground, some ten metres from the fatal point of collision with the wall on the high-speed curve at the Tamburello corner of the Imola circuit, near Bologna, northern Italy. As they did so, says Watkins, Senna ‘sighed, and though I am totally agnostic, I felt his soul departed at that moment.’1 The driver was taken by helicopter on a 211-mile journey to Maggiore Hospital in the care of Dr Giovanni Gordini, the hospital’s intensive care anaesthetist, who had been in charge of the medical centre at the circuit. All the while, Senna, although effectively dead, was kept alive artificially. A brain scan at the hospital, which revealed massive damage to both skull and brain, confirmed there was no hope. At 6 pm that day, Sunday 1 May 1994, Ayrton Senna da Silva was officially pronounced dead.

  The news of his death was received in Brazil by a wave of national grief. Tears flowed openly for a man whose supreme racing skills had earned him legendary status. His body was flown to Paris, where a Boeing 747, the presidential aircraft of Brazil’s leader, Itmar Franco, had been provided to complete its homeward journey to the capital city of São Paulo and Senna’s birthplace. The government announced a three-day period of national mourning and the May Day mass in Rio de Janeiro was dedicated to his name. For 24 hours his body lay in the city’s state legislature, where an estimated 8000 people per hour filed past to pay their final respects. On Thursday 5 May eight soldiers carried his coffin from the state legislature to a fire engine, which, escorted by a mounted guard, then bore it to Morumbi Cemetery. With the engine heading a procession of thousands of fans on motorcycles, bikes and foot, the short journey took an hour and 50 minutes.

  Racing stars past and present, including Jackie Stewart, Gerhard Berger, Emerson and Christian Fittipaldi, Derek Warwick, Thierry Boutsen, Roberto Moreno, Rubens Barrichello and Alain Prost, once Senna’s bitter rival, took turns as pallbearers, carrying the casket to its burial place. After a 21-gun salute, an air force fly-past traced a heart in brightly coloured smoke, topped with an ‘S’, in the sky. It was an occasion of immense sorrow for the people of Brazil, who genuinely shared the tragedy of Senna’s death. But one person, someone who knew Senna well, was conspicuous by his absence.

  He was Bernie Ecclestone, an elderly, diminutive man of unprepossessing appearance who, over the years, as his wealth and stature grew with each megabuck deal and power battle won, had come to be variously described in the media as the Godfather, the dictator or, more apposite, the ringmaster of the Formula One circus. But, for all Ecclestone’s power and stature, Senna’s intensely private family, headed by wealthy businessman Milton da Silva, who doted upon the second of his three children, made it known that his attendance would be considered ‘inconvenient’. The reason for their opposition to Ecclestone’s presence was not made public, but it was believed to have been due to the way in which he had handled the news of Senna’s death at the circuit. Members of the family, including his younger brother, Leonardo, were at the race and within minutes had been informed of the crash by senior officials.

  At the suggestion of race press officer Martin Whitaker, they were taken to Ecclestone’s palatial motor home, where, although it had yet to be confirmed, Ecclestone told Leonardo that Senna was dead. Leonardo was said to have become so distressed that Ecclestone, apparently in an attempt to calm him down, then told him that he had been misinformed, that his brother was not dead but had suffered head injuries. The damage was done, however, and it merely kindled a hope that would soon be dashed. An inquiry held a week later by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula One’s governing body, did little to clear up the confusion.

  Max Mosley, the president of the FIA and a long-standing political ally and friend of Ecclestone, corroborated Ecclestone’s misunderstanding by stating that shortly after the accident he had received two phone calls at home from the Formula One boss – the first to tell him that Senna was dead, and the second to correct the first. Ecclestone, according to Mosley, said during the second call: ‘I misheard Whitaker. He actually said he [Senna] has injured his head.’2 It seems that Ecclestone thought Whitaker had said ‘dead’ instead of ‘head’.

  It is difficult to understand how he could have made such a mistake in the light of a statement read out by Whitaker some 45 minutes after the crash. Whitaker confirms that Ecclestone was present when he tersely announced that ‘Senna had received serious head injuries an
d was being transported to Maggiore Hospital’. Ecclestone’s subsequent confusion would seem all the more baffling because Whitaker recalls that Ecclestone then sought clarification from him of Senna’s condition, when it was still not possible to say that the driver was dead. Whitaker called at Ecclestone’s motor home, where he saw members of the Senna family ‘totally distressed. I think the family were under the impression that Senna was dead, full stop. In fact, we did not know he was dead until some hours later.’

  Sections of the Brazilian media offered their own interpretation of the events in Ecclestone’s motor home. It was reported that Ecclestone had changed his mind about Senna’s condition because he feared there was a real danger that his many dedicated admirers in the crowds would react in the same way that it was claimed that Leonardo, in particular, had, and that it would threaten the safe continuation of the race.

  Eight years later, in recalling the events of that day, Ecclestone believed that his first information on Senna’s condition came in a walkie-talkie message from Watkins. ‘Sid must have said that to me [that Senna was dead]. He was on the spot. I think that is what happened. And afterwards I went to our little motor home and the Senna family hot-footed behind. I said what Sid had said. Then Martin said to me, “No, he’s not dead, it’s his head.” Then I said to the brother [Leonardo], “Thank God he is not dead, but you know…”’ Ecclestone did not, he said, tell Leonardo that his brother was still alive in order to calm him down. ‘Obviously he wasn’t overjoyed, his brother. Not over the moon with the whole thing. But there wasn’t distress in a way that one would tell them something that wasn’t true to make [him] undistressed. The one that was more distressed was his PR lady.’

  Ecclestone says he didn’t attend Senna’s funeral – not because of any animosity towards him by the driver’s family – but because of the hypocrisy he perceives in people who attend church without believing in God or, at least, as regular churchgoers, a principle he practised even when his parents died. ‘I am not very religious so I don’t want to go to church. That’s the first thing – because I don’t think people should use churches to get married and go to funerals. If you want to go to church, you should go to church, [and] not just when it suits you.’

  He also believes that to attend a funeral out of respect for the deceased is a double standard. ‘If somebody is dead, they are dead. It has nothing to do with respect. Half the time the people who go to the funerals don’t respect the people when they are alive. Better to look after them when they are alive and don’t worry when they are dead. As I don’t believe in this afterlife, if, when I get up there, they start screaming at me because I didn’t go to the funeral, then I’ll apologise. But I’ll have to wait until that happens.’ And when the time comes for him to shake off his mortal coil, a corner of a field somewhere without a single mourner will do him nicely. ‘Absolutely. If it’s cheaper, I’ll be happy.’

  While he did not attend Senna’s funeral, he did accompany his wife, Slavica, to São Paulo in his Learjet so that she could do so. ‘She was very close to Ayrton, and she believes in all this business. She walked along [in the funeral procession] with the mayor.’ Ecclestone killed time in a hotel watching the ceremony on television. But his absence was described by a former associate as ‘one of the saddest things. He was very close to Senna and helped him in so many ways.’ His low-key presence in the city was in marked contrast to another public event nine years earlier, when, amidst a pageant of back-slapping hype in the state legislature in Rio de Janeiro, the title of ‘Honorary Citizen and Provider’ was conferred upon him to mark the signing of an agreement for the city to stage the Brazilian Grand Prix for the next three years.

  If Ecclestone was guilty of gross insensitivity, his comments three years later did nothing to lessen the offence. Attempting to rationalise the national expression of public grief that followed Senna’s death, he said that if he had been killed like Roland Ratzenberger, a 32-year-old Austrian driver who had died the previous day during a practice run in a Simtek-Ford, and which hadn’t been seen on television, ‘it wouldn’t have created such a terrific impact. It was the fact that for an hour people were saying: “What’s happened to him [Senna]? Is he going to make it?” It was a public death. Like crucifying Jesus Christ on television.’3

  The Italian authorities immediately announced an investigation into the cause of Senna’s accident and impounded the wreckage of the car, seizing even the driver’s helmet. A lengthy investigation was predicted by those who knew the ways of Italian bureaucracy, and with good reason: following the death of Jochen Rindt, who died during a practice session at Monza in 1970, his car remained locked away in the possession of the police for twenty years. Fear of legal action caused considerable concern among the Formula One teams. A successful prosecution would, they believed, leave them vulnerable to similar action. Four months after Senna’s death, Max Mosley issued a warning at the Hungarian Grand Prix that the teams might be unwilling to race in Italy if the investigating authorities decided to prosecute. Closer to home, Flavio Briatore, boss of the Benetton team, announced that he would not race in his home country if members of the Williams team were to be held culpable. Ferrari bosses were also uneasy at the implications of criminal proceedings.

  In December 1996, almost two years and eight months after the accident, prosecuting magistrate Maurizio Passarini finally announced that Frank Williams, founder and managing director of the Williams team, and five others – chief designer Adrian Newey, technical director Patrick Head and three senior track officials, Roland Bruynseraede, Federico Bendinelli and Giorgio Poggi – would face charges of manslaughter. It was alleged that the steering column of Senna’s car had been cut, expanded to satisfy Senna’s demand for more space in the cockpit, but had been poorly re-welded, which had caused the column to break. It was also alleged that the way the track had been maintained could have contributed to the accident.

  But Frank Williams and his colleagues had no reason to fear prosecution. Such is the political power of Formula One and its importance to Italy in particular that the loss of the Italian Grand Prix – and there can be little doubt that Mosley, supported by Ecclestone, would have successfully recommended its cancellation if matters had come to such a head – would have provoked an uprising in the streets. Under Italian law, the authorities were obliged to investigate the fatal crash but in the end it could never have been more than an administrative exercise.

  Eleven months after the announcement of the charges, which Williams and his co-defendants vigorously denied, Passarini, who had been zealous in his investigation, made a remarkable U-turn. Williams, he stated, should ‘be let off for not having committed the offence’ and Newey and Head should each receive a one-year suspended sentence because their ‘error’ had been ‘microscopic’. Although the cause of the accident remained unresolved, the following month, on 16 December 1997, Judge Antonio Costanzo announced his verdict in a makeshift courtroom in Imola into which the world’s media were crammed. Only the defendants themselves, already notified of the contents of Costanzo’s report, were absent as he formally cleared all six men of the charges.

  Earlier in Passarini’s investigation, Ecclestone himself had been in danger of ending up in court, along with three of his employees. Ecclestone’s company, FOCA TV, had been providing in-car television coverage for the Italian television company, RAI, through cameras mounted on 20 of the 26 cars. Videotape footage requested by Passarini showed that a camera had been running in Senna’s car until nine-tenths of a second before the fatal collision. According to on-site director Alan Woollard, because the picture showed a clear track and was of limited interest, the picture was switched to another car. The next frame, shot from the car of Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari 412T1, showed another empty section of the track. That, said producer Eddie Baker, had been a mistake. The picture should have been switched to the Tyrrell 002 car of Ukyo Katayama, which promised more dramatic coverage.

  Passarini complained of a delay of mo
re than two years in receiving the videotape, caused, said FOCA TV, by a misunderstanding. He rejected this explanation, choosing to interpret the delay, and the shot of an empty section of the track, as evidence that the tape had been tampered with to remove the final frames, which might have indicated that Senna was having problems with the steering. Woollard, Baker and camera-car technician Andrew James were in danger of being charged with perjury, said Passarini, while Ecclestone was being investigated ‘for other possible charges, such as aiding and abetting’.4 Ecclestone vehemently denied the accusations, and, on hearing Passarini express his doubts about the videotape to reporters outside the court, threatened legal action. Neither side pressed charges, criminal or civil. But, again, there was very little chance indeed of Ecclestone finding himself in court. He was far too powerful to be hauled before a court to face the humiliation of public prosecution.

  At the time of Mosley’s warning at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Ecclestone had been talking to one of his high-powered political friends, media magnate and Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, who was seeking reassurances about the future of Formula One in his country. Soon to be voted out of office and the subject of several judicial investigations into bribery, corruption and tax evasion, Berlusconi was, in May 2001, ranked as the world’s fourteenth richest man with a personal fortune estimated at $12.8 billion. The politician, who would be re-elected Prime Minister, had a personal interest in retaining the good will of the Formula One teams in general and Ecclestone’s in particular. His company, MediaSet, owned three of Italy’s independent television stations, Rete 4, Italia 1 and Canale 5, which had the exclusive contract to screen the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Berlusconi was in a position to give Ecclestone every assurance of a satisfactory outcome.