F1 Racing: What does the Future Hold for Our Bernie

There's no point in trying to play this straight. Ask Bernie Ecclestone about What Happens Next, and useful answers come there none. The man is an object lesson in evasiveness. It's therefore up to professional Bernie-watchers to do the digging. Five of the best analyse the Bernie method and media, his retirement and good works, and the Bernie legacy.

Our Bernie: The rampant racer

By Peter Windsor

I'm not sure that Bernard Ecclestone (as I know he prefers to be called) is as much a 'sportsman' as he is a 'racer' - in the truest, purest sense of the word. Above all he's ultra-competitive. He loves winning, hates losing - and, like Michael Schumacher, will go to some lengths to stop other people from being successful, even if it means that he, too, fails to win.

Bernie Ecclestone speaks to the media at the 2005 United States Grand Prix © LAT

This, I think, is the main reason for his triumphs all these years. Yes, he's a great 'businessman'; yes, he can see the light amid the darkness; yes, he's a great actor; and, yes, he knows the price of a second-hand car. More than anything, though, Bernard is a racer. He wins for the sport of it.

Selling F1 to Leo Kirch, then regrouping the F1 industry, in effect repossessing the assets (as I described in F1 Racing, March 2005), was therefore as much 'sport' as it was 'business'. Could it be done? Were F1 luminaries really that gullible? He couldn't know for sure, but still took the plunge. And won.

So what's next? On the basis that yesterday is as boring to Bernard as a slice of stale bread, he'll now be looking only to the future - the next generation of drivers, for example, or the next possible team buy-out. He had a lot of success with his own Brabham team and has since had fun with Flavio (and thus with the Benetton, Ligier and Renault teams) and with the odd Russian or crazy Australian. I'm sure he's looking forward to the one-tyre F1, and I'm sure he loves the concept of a single engine supply.

I think he also wants to see F1 on interactive digital TV again, reviving a brilliant system that he wanted to take free-to-air at least four years ago. When the F1 team owners rejected his offer, I think the 'racer' in Bernie obliged him to take the opposite route - ie, the relatively tame TV feed we see now.

In 2007, then, with the slate just about clean, look forward to Bernard treading new TV frontiers.

Our Bernie: The new media mugger

By Steve Cooper

An FOM camera man at the 2002 Hungarian GP © LAT

When you understand that Bernie Ecclestone considers the fax machine to be at the cutting edge of 21st-century communication, you start to worry about just how effectively he has embraced modern digital technology; and whether he even uses the internet, given the relatively lean pickings on formula1.com - the sport's official website.

Yes, there have been signs that Bernie wants to move forward. His adoption of digital TV technology in the late 1990s was brave. But he misjudged the market, creating a bespoke service that few people wanted and even fewer could afford.

Did those burnt fingers leave him resistant to the charms of the digital media? It certainly seems so. Despite gradual advances in TV technology, there's still a nagging feeling that the departments required to build and promote a digital F1 media structure are still in the planning stages or, worse, yet to show any signs of life.

This summer's World Cup became a watershed for sports media (you could watch matches live on your computer, catch highlights on the web and receive clips to your 3G mobile). What does Bernie offer? A text and picture package for an upfront price. It's an offer so unappealing that it hardly compares with other major sports.

So what's the problem? First, like any 75-year-old, Bernie is largely resistant to change, and he's so protective of his empire that he's hugely reluctant to concede any ground. Second, prohibitive deals between FOM and broadcasters and other media mean that no third-party sources are well-placed to provide services. Third, creating a bespoke new digital infrastructure - to the high standards that Bernie expects - takes lots of time and money.

F1 needs to jump on the digital bandwagon. There's no doubt that the sport will adopt the technology, but it's unlikely that Bernie will turn F1 into a pacesetter. A great pity, because that's what F1 ought to be.

Our Bernie: The community carer

By Maurice Hamilton

Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone © Reuters

Trouble is, we don't know a fraction of what Bernie Ecclestone gets up to with his wealth. And that, of course, is exactly how he likes it. Not because he has anything to hide. On the contrary, Mr E does good work behind the scenes but, unlike some philanthropic folk, doesn't crow about it. Anyway, what business is it of ours?

However, it's worth knowing that, if he ever lets go of the F1 tiller, his generosity will continue until a force beyond even Bernie's control draws up his final balance sheet.

There are clues to the extent of his benevolent work. When you walk into the F1 paddock at Silverstone, for instance, an unmarked motor home is usually tucked quietly by the entrance. There you'll find children from Great Ormond Street enjoying the thrill of their difficult lifetime thanks to the unspoken actions of the man in the immaculate white shirt and razor-pressed trousers.

Other charities - invariably involving kids - also receive his patronage even though, most of the time, you wouldn't know he's the generous bidder at auctions for stuff he doesn't really need.

For sure, what Bernie will continue to do is look after those who have looked after him, or been part of his life or extended family in the paddock. Just ask Frank Williams; just ask anyone who worked with him at Brabham. They'll be reluctant to mention his name because that isn't the way Bernie works. But his subtle acts of caring prevail and will continue to do so.

Our Bernie: The Saga charger

By Alan Henry

Oscar Wilde once said, "When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now I'm old, I know it is."

Bernie Ecclestone's Mayback in the Monza paddock © LAT

Bernie Ecclestone might well identify with that. But, now aged 75, he still has his foot flat on the gas in the fast lane, and the notion that at some time in the forseeable future he's going to transmute into some cuddly old grandfather figure, warming his slippers by the fireside, is about as likely as Max Mosley taking Holy Orders (apart from those trickling down from Mr E, that is).

Guys like Bernie don't retire. He has already successfully run the gauntlet of the sort of major heart surgery that would have consigned most of us to a life of doing nothing more stressful than watering the dahlias. Yet in practical terms, you're bound to conclude that one day - inevitably - he will at least be obliged to slow the pace of his life ever-so-slightly.

If he has a problem, perhaps the fact that he's lived his life buttressed by the credo that 'delegation is the art of accepting second best' has made it virtually impossible for him to let go. In any case, when you've got all the money in the world, he's hardly in a position to have to worry about his pension paying off big time.

No, Bernie will be there right to the end, treading the boards like some octogenarian impresario. CVC Capital Partners may technically now own the business, but worries about how it will operate in practical terms, post-Bernie, send a chill wind down the pit lane.

No retirement plans. No retirement strategy. No Saga holidays to Tunisia or Sun City. Bernie will play it out all the way to the chequered flag. Work may not be all he knows, but it's certainly the thing he most loves.

Our Bernie: The Pearly Gates gaffer

By Matt Bishop

When he finally steps down, does Tony Blair really want Gordon Brown to be a successful prime minister? When he's earning millions on the US lecture tour, does Tony really want to hear that, back home, all the papers are saying that Gordy is doing a fabulous job at No 10?

Or, awful truth be told, would Blair, in fact, secretly be happier if David Cameron were to lead the Conservatives to victory at the next general election, relegating Brown to footnote status, and leaving him, Blair, free to call himself "the last great Labour Prime Minister" (or some such self-aggrandising claptrap)?

Sir Frank Williams and Bernie Ecclestone © LAT

In the sense that he's only interested in the here-and-now, and doesn't want some interloper jumping on the bandwagon he created, I fear that Bernie may be cut from the same cloth as Blair. Unlike Ron Dennis, say, whose McLaren Technology Centre will live on as he, the late Lord Dennis of Woking, proudly looks down upon it from his heavenly prat-perch, Ecclestone thinks little of his legacy and nothing of posterity. Formula 1 is his train-set, his cash-cow. End of.

About 10 years ago - accounts vary - Ron, Ken Tyrrell and Frank Williams went to Bernie and tried to discuss the undiscussable, to ask the unaskable: what happens after you die? They got nowhere. Bernie wasn't interested. He still isn't.

Why not? Because he'll work and work and work until, one day, he'll wake up dead. And as long as his beloved wife and family are safe and healthy and well set, which they will be, he'll have died happy.

In the lead-up to the 2000 Belgian Grand Prix, a local newspaper ran the following Ecclestone quote: "Nothing frightens me, not even death." In the Spa paddock a day or two later, I asked him whether he'd actually made the remark. "Probably not, but it's true anyway," he muttered.

Oh, and when he gets to the Pearly Gates, worry not: he'll get what he wants. He always does. He'll probably cut a deal with St Peter. Or God. And he'll get the better of it, too.