Bernie Ecclestone

Ecclestone in 1992

**Bernard Charles "Bernie" Ecclestone** (born 28 October 1930) is a British business magnate. He is the chief executive of the Formula One Group, which manages Formula One motor racing and controls the commercial rights to the sport. As such, he was commonly described in journalism as the 'F1 Supremo'.

Ecclestone began his career as a racing driver and entered two Grand Prix races during the 1958 season, but failed to qualify for either of them. Later, he became manager of drivers Stuart Lewis-Evans and Jochen Rindt. In 1972, he bought the Brabham team, which he ran for 15 years. As a team owner he became a member of the Formula One Constructors Association.

His control of the sport, which grew from his pioneering sale of the television rights in the late 1970s, was chiefly financial; however, under the terms of the Concorde Agreement, Ecclestone and his companies also controlled the administration, setup and logistics of each Grand Prix, thus making him one of the richest men in the United Kingdom.

## Early life

Ecclestone was born on 28 October 1930 in St Peter South Elmham, a hamlet three miles south of Bungay. He was the son of Sidney Ecclestone, a fisherman, whose family was originally from Kent, and his wife Bertha Sophia (née Westley). Ecclestone attended primary school in Wissett in Suffolk before the family moved to Danson Road, Bexleyheath, southeast London, in 1938. He was not evacuated to the countryside during the Second World War and remained with his family.

Ecclestone left Dartford West Central Secondary School at the age of 16 to work as an assistant in the chemical laboratory at the local gasworks testing gas purity. He also studied chemistry at Woolwich Polytechnic and pursued his hobby of motorcycles.

## Driver Information

### Born

28 October 1930
St Peter South Elmham, Suffolk, England

## Formula One Career Statistics

### Last entry

1958 British Grand Prix

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Ecclestone went into business trading in spare parts for motorcycles, and formed the Compton & Ecclestone motorcycle dealership with Fred Compton. His first racing experience came in 1949 in the 500cc Formula 3 Series, acquiring a Cooper Mk V in 1951.

He drove only a limited number of races, mainly at his local circuit, Brands Hatch, but achieved a number of good placings and an occasional win. He initially retired from racing following several accidents at Brands Hatch, intending to focus on his business interests.

### Team ownership

After his accident, Ecclestone temporarily left racing to make a number of eventually lucrative investments in property and loan financing and to manage the Weekend Car Auctions firm.

He returned to racing in 1957 as manager of driver Stuart Lewis-Evans, and purchased two chassis from the disbanded Connaught Formula One team. Ecclestone even tried, unsuccessfully, to qualify a car himself at Monaco in 1958, although this has since been described as "not a serious attempt".

He also entered the British Grand Prix, but the car was raced by Jack Fairman. He continued to manage Lewis-Evans when he moved to the Vanwall team; Roy Salvadori moved on to manage the Cooper team. Lewis-Evans suffered severe burns when his engine exploded at the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix and died six days later; Ecclestone was shocked and once again retired from racing.

His friendship with Salvadori led to his becoming manager of driver Jochen Rindt and a partial owner of Rindt's 1970 Lotus Formula 2 team, whose other driver was Graham Hill. Rindt, on his way to the 1970 World Championship, died in a crash at the Monza circuit, though he was awarded the championship posthumously.

### Brabham

During the 1971 season, Ecclestone was approached by Ron Tauranac, owner of the Brabham team, who was looking for a suitable business partner. Ecclestone made him an offer of £100,000 for the whole team, which Tauranac eventually accepted. Tauranac stayed on as designer and to run the factory, while Colin Seeley was briefly brought in against Tauranac's wishes to assist in design and management.

Ecclestone and Tauranac were both dominant personalities and Tauranac left Brabham early in the 1972 season. The team achieved little during 1972, as Ecclestone moulded the team to fit his vision of a Formula One team. He abandoned the highly successful customer car production business established by Jack Brabham and Tauranac – reasoning that to compete at the very front in Formula One you must concentrate all of your resources there. For the 1973 season, Ecclestone promoted Gordon Murray to chief designer. The young South African produced the triangular cross-section BT42, the first of a series of Ford-powered cars with which the Brabham team would take several victories in 1974 and 1975 with Carlos Reutemann and Carlos Pace.

Despite the increasing success of Murray's nimble Ford-powered cars, Ecclestone signed a deal with Alfa Romeo to use its powerful but heavy flat-12 engine from the 1976 season. Although this was financially beneficial, the new BT45s were unreliable and the Alfa engines rendered them significantly overweight. The 1976 and 1977 seasons saw Brabham fall towards the back of the field again, before winning two races again in the 1978 season when Ecclestone signed the Austrian double world champion Niki Lauda, intrigued by Murray's radical BT46 design.

The Brabham-Alfa era ended in 1979, the team's first season with the up-and-coming young Brazilian Nelson Piquet when Alfa Romeo started testing its own Formula One car during that season. This prompted Ecclestone to revert to Cosworth DFV engines – a move Murray described as "like having a holiday".

Piquet formed a close and long-lasting relationship with Ecclestone and the team, losing the title after a narrow battle with Alan Jones in 1980 and eventually winning in 1981 and 1983. In the summer of 1981 Brabham had tested a car powered by a BMW turbo engine, and 1982's new BT50 was powered by BMW's turbocharged four-cylinder *M10*. Brabham continued to run the Ford-powered BT49D in the early part of the season while reliability and driveability issues were sorted out by BMW and its technical partner Bosch. Ecclestone and BMW came close to splitting before the turbo car duly took its first win at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix but the partnership took the first turbo-powered world championship in 1983.

The team continued to be competitive until 1985. At the end of the year, Piquet left after seven years. He was unhappy with the money that Ecclestone was willing to offer him and went to Williams where he would win his third championship. The following year, Murray, who since 1973 had designed cars that had scored 22 GP wins, left Brabham to join McLaren. Brabham continued under Ecclestone's leadership to the end of the 1987 season, in which the team scored only eight points. BMW withdrew from Formula One after the 1987 season.

Having bought the team from Ron Tauranac for approximately $120,000 at the end of 1971, Ecclestone eventually sold it for over US$5 million to a Swiss businessman, Joachim Luhti in 1988.

### Formula One executive

In parallel to his activities as team owner, Ecclestone formed the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974 with Frank Williams, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Ken Tyrrell, and Max Mosley. He became increasingly involved with his roles at FISA and the FOCA in the 1970s, in particular with negotiating the sport's television rights, in his decades-long advocacy for team control.

Ecclestone became chief executive of FOCA in 1978 with Mosley as his legal adviser; together, they negotiated a series of legal issues with the FIA and Jean-Marie Balestre, culminating in Ecclestone's famous coup, his securing the right for FOCA to negotiate television contracts for the Grands Prix. For this purpose Ecclestone established Formula One Promotions and Administration, giving 47% of television revenues to teams, 30% to the FIA, and 23% to FOPA (i.e. Ecclestone himself); in return, FOPA put up the prize money – *grand prix* could literally be translated from French as "great prize".

Also in 1978, Ecclestone hired Sid Watkins as official Formula One medical doctor. Following the crash at the 1978 Italian Grand Prix, Watkins demanded that Ecclestone provide better safety measures, which were provided at the next race. This way, Formula One began to improve safety, decreasing the number of deaths and serious injuries along the decades.

## Personal life

Ecclestone has been married twice. With first wife Ivy, he has a daughter, Deborah. Ecclestone had a 17-year relationship with Tuana Tan, which ended in 1984 when Slavica Radić, later his second wife, became pregnant. Ecclestone then married Yugoslav-born former Armani model Radić. The couple have two daughters, Tamara (born 1984) and Petra (born 1988).

## Formula One Statistical Overview

### Complete Formula One results

(key)

## Notes

1. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone". *Rich List 2008*. London. 27 April 2008. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
2. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Weaver, Paul (15 May 2013). "Bernie Ecclestone F1 future under cloud as bribery charges are prepared". *The Guardian*. London. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
3. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Mark Webber v Sebastian Vettel clash: F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone unhappy with Red Bull's tactics". *The Independent*. London. 26 March 2013. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
4. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Bervanakis, Maria (23 January 2012). "The fast life of 'F1 Supremo' Bernie Ecclestone". News Limited Network. Archived from the original on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Tremayne, David (1996). *Formula One: A Complete Race by Race Guide* (1st ed.). Avonmouth, Bristol, United Kingdom: Parragon Book Service. p. 8. ISBN 0-7525-1762-7. Retrieved 1 March 2008.
6. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Grand prix, grand prizes". *The Economist*. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Bower, Tom (2011). *No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone*. Faber and Faber. pp. 11–15. ISBN 9780571269365.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Poor Suffolk boy to Formula One billionaire Archived 10 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine, *Eastern Daily Press*, 3 March 2011. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
9. ↑ Surnames beginning with E.
10. ↑ Bernie Ecclestone Biography at Grand Prix.com.. Retrieved 10 February 2014
11. ↑ Bernie Ecclestone – F1 Driver Profile. ESPN.
12. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Lovell, Terry (2009). *Bernie Ecclestone: King of Sport*. London: John Blake. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-84454-826-2.
13. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Small, Steve (1994). *The Guinness Complete Grand Prix Who's Who*. Enfield: Guinness Publishing. p. 411. ISBN 0-85112-702-9.
14. ↑ Sylt, Christian (10 November 2013). Bernie Ecclestone signs $600 million Formula One deal. *Autoweek*.
15. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"8W – Who – Graham Hill". *Autosport*. 10 June 2002. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
16. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>O'Keefe, Thomas C. (6 October 1999). "Formula Bernie (Tobacco + TV + Tracks = $2 Billion)". *Atlas F1*. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
17. ↑ Lawrence (1999) p. 116 Tauranac claims that Ecclestone initially offered £130,000, but lowered the offer at the last minute. Ecclestone denies that this happened. Lovell (2004) pp.32–33
18. ↑ Garrett, Jerry (1 October 2002). Dr. Watkins, Guardian Angel. *Car and Driver*.
19. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Bower, Tom (2012). *No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone*. Faber & Faber. p. 133. ISBN 9780571269365.
20. ↑ Lovell (2004) p.345
21. ↑ Bernie Ecclestone. *Motor Sport*.
22. ↑ Carter, Ben (2 March 2011). Bernie Ecclestone's shower of madness. The Roar.