Why Ecclestone still has the power to make F1 squirm

You have to wonder what the so-called “new fans” who have engaged with Formula 1 in the Drive to Survive era must make of 95-year-old Bernie Ecclestone. Or, indeed, why what he has to say is considered so important – especially when the latest batch of soundbites, as decanted into the microphones of the German broadcaster RTL and website sport.de, consist largely of equal parts rambling and stating the obvious, with a side order of pure mischief.

Picking George Russell and Mercedes as championship favourites is hardly going out on a limb. By the same token, touting Gabriel Bortoleto as a future world champion doesn’t represent a radical position, coming from someone who lives on a Brazilian coffee plantation bigger than Monaco, and who has played a tacit role in supporting Bortoleto’s career.

Anodyne remarks about Audi’s prospects, and those of Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton, would barely have merited being reported had they been uttered by anyone else. No, the real sting of it was his criticism of the new technical regulations.

"There will be confusion at the start of the season because everyone has to relearn Formula 1," he harrumphed. "And the rules certainly don't favour Max Verstappen and his style of racing.

"It’s less about pure racing. But that’s the direction of development: more regulations, more rules for the drivers - don’t do this, don’t do that. It is a drivers' world championship and not one for engineers. Formula 1 is now competing more with Formula E.

"Maybe the fans will like that, but I don’t think so. The danger is that we lose the fans. I sincerely hope I’m wrong."

Ecclestone is no longer the ringmaster of F1, but he still has the ability to apply his influence within the paddock

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Again, if it were your grandfather trotting out the better-back-then schtick, those present would merely roll their eyes and get on with their lives. But this is Bernard Charles Ecclestone, formerly the all-powerful ‘ringmaster’ of F1, so his opinions are considered well-informed enough to warrant the hold-the-front-page treatment.

‘New’ fans could be forgiven for wondering who the old man is, and why he’s shaking his fist at that cloud, but Bernie used to speak in public so rarely that on those occasions when he was sighted in the wild, a stampede would break out to be first to get a Dictaphone under his nose. Pole position was important because, then as now, Bernie was inclined to speak only in a conspiratorial sotto voce.

When Ecclestone’s power was at its peak, you couldn’t simply call his office asking for comment. No, you sent a begging request and sat by the phone.

In the paddock, Ecclestone’s motorhome – a squat blue slab with blacked-out windows – emphasised the potent sense of unavailability and mystique

A magazine this author worked for once published something which incurred his displeasure. Out of the blue the phone rang one day and the deputy editor picked up: “Hello. Eh? Oh, hello Bernie. Eh? OK. Bye…” after some sharp words came down the line.

In the paddock, Ecclestone’s motorhome – a squat blue slab with blacked-out windows – emphasised the potent sense of unavailability and mystique, never more so than in Monaco, where it presided over the tiny ‘town square’ in the paddock which was the only free space not occupied by the ever more ludicrously large ziggurats housing the teams. There, a veritable conga line of supplicants gathered in the hope that the doors would slide open and they would be whisked into the inner sanctum.

Even before Bernie made his land-grab for the commercial rights in the 1980s, he was the object of myth-making. There are those who connect him to the Great Train Robbery, chiefly because he gave getaway driver Roy ‘The Weasel’ James a job making trophies when James got out of jail. Ecclestone has always laughed it off while quietly enjoying being the object of such speculation.

Ecclesstone's way of running F1 clashed with Liberty Media's plans, so his time in the top job was always limited once the takeover was complete

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

There are other stories, less fantastical but which speak to the mix of audacity, freewheeling enterprise and clinical execution which has defined his life in commerce: that his reputation as a car salesman was such that others would come from all over the country to his showroom in the hope of besting him in a deal. At some point on the way home they would inevitably telephone to ascertain what they had actually bought.

It’s said that Bernie once brokered the sale of a private aircraft, earning himself a considerable profit in the process, before he had even bought and taken delivery of it in the first place. At some point in his life the accumulation of wealth became almost an irrelevance to him – the game, the dance, was all that mattered. Hence his latter-day acts of serial legerdemain in which he sold the commercial rights to a procession of buyers while still remaining in charge.

In Liberty Media, though, the irresistible force met an immovable object. Handshake deals and the whole smoke-and-mirrors routine were never going to cut it with an American-based corporation rooted in transparency, marching to a routine of quarterly earnings calls. Ecclestone quickly had the proverbial gold watch clamped on his wrist before being escorted from the premises, though Liberty described his position as “chairman emeritus”.

With this corporate fig leaf, one is inevitably reminded of when Rupert Murdoch fired Frank Giles as editor of the Sunday Times following the Hitler Diaries fiasco. “You’re going to be ‘editor emeritus’,” Murdoch reportedly drawled. “That’s ‘e’ as in ‘ex’, and ‘meritus’ because you bloody deserve it.”

Liberty Media has done much to expunge Ecclestone’s legacy ever since, even going so far as to change the F1 logo. But in the neat echelon of the motorhomes and trucks there is a persistent reminder of temps perdu, when Bernie insisted that the paddock and its outlying territories be spick and span, just as the cars and motorcycles in his showrooms were parked just so and immaculately polished.

There are many still in F1 who built their fortunes as Ecclestone made his. But there’s also no doubt the category is a healthier place for his absence: commercially, he had an enormous blind spot for anything which did not involve cash up front, hence his famous disdain for social media and anyone who couldn’t afford a Rolex. Liberty’s embrace of those demographics has grown the audience as well as the sponsor portfolio.

Many kept the former F1 supremo as an ally in recent years

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

And while you might agree with Bernie’s sentiments regarding the technical direction of ‘the show’, let’s not forget that on his watch F1 was a category of haves and have-nots in which almost half the grid was beggared in service of keeping the wealthier ones on side.

Now, vexatiously and disobligingly as far as the current commercial rights holder is concerned, Ecclestone keeps cropping up like Banquo’s ghost, mischievously stirring the pot. Last year’s brief “bring back V10s” craze came at his instigation, when then Red Bull team principal Christian Horner popped him on speakerphone during a pre-season F1 Commission meeting.

Likewise his claim regarding who knew what and when in the fall-out of Nelson Piquet Jr’s deliberate crash during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix has become the subject of an embarrassing ongoing court case.

Everything else in the interview was just noise: Bernie wanted to roll a grenade under F1’s door, and he did

This latest intervention, poking at what is widely known to be a sore point for F1, is studiedly deliberate. Everything else in the interview was just noise: Bernie wanted to roll a grenade under F1’s door, and he did. Because he could.

He used to be practically impossible to get hold of but there’s no shutting him up now. Perhaps that’s because, like any good Rolex owner, he’s got time on his hands…

Ecclestone's comments over F1's new rules were pointed as per

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