No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone
By Tom Bower
(Faber and Faber, R154)
I have been a Formula One fan for most of my life and have watched most of the races on TV. I can even recall having attended F1 races at Kyalami.
I count among my most disappointing memories not being able to walk the streets of Monaco when a friend whizzed me through the principality during a visit to Europe.
Now I discover that the F1 circuit is run by a former second-hand motor dealer with some strange habits and that most of the teams have skeletons in their cupboards.
There appear to be very few principled players involved in the sport and it seems all is fair in love and F1.
In Tom Bower’s words, Bernie Ecclestone’s management values appear to be “autocracy, skuldug-gery and exploitation of his opponent’s dysfunctional charac-ters”. This very small man, perhaps only 1.6m tall, built Formula One into what it is today and has an insider’s view of all the racing teams and principals.
As Ecclestone at one stage said of the F1 fraternity, “everyone ran cars underweight and cheated”.
This is the authorised autobiography of Ecclestone and, accor-ding to the author, he made himself available to answer any questions and also arranged that most of the other participants in F1 were at hand to corroborate or refute his account of particular events.
Bower traces Ecclestone’s rise from a teenager selling second-hand motorcycles in the late 1940s to the F1 supremo some 40 years later, the inevitable deal maker.
The suspicious mother of a school friend remarked: “Don’t do much bargaining with Bernard. He gets the better of every deal.”
Ecclestone has a lot of racing history in his blood. He raced motorcycles, tried his hand at qualifying an F1 car himself at Monaco and also owned an F1 team.
His legacy will not be his average performance on a racetrack or the several accidents he was involved in, but rather the billion-dollar enterprise he built around F1, the second-most watched sport on TV, as well as the premier division of motor racing.
The book is remarkably candid about what happens inside F1 and the machinations of the organisa-tions involved in the sport.
On one side there is the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) and on the other is Foca (F1 Constructors Association or F1CA).
Ecclestone acquired Brabham in 1971, an F1 team in decline, and this gave him entry to the F1CA.
From here it was a small step for the deal-making Ecclestone to start representing the F1 teams when negotiating fees to race at circuits and organise transport for them, obviously at a fee.
Not one of the teams was interested in doing this. They may have been united by their passion for racing, but they were divided on everything else and Ecclestone was willing to be the sacrificial lamb who did all the work. He would get a commission by unanimous vote from all present.
The F1CA eventually morphed into Foca and TV coverage became huge. Ecclestone obtained the rights to the TV coverage when everybody else thought it was an insignificant part of the business.
Most of the main characters are in the book – Max Mosley, Frank Williams, Ron Dennis, Flavio Briatori and Colin Chapman, as are most of the drivers. Ecclestone has acerbic comments about them all.
The relationship between Ecclestone and Mosley is also detailed in the book. He entered Ecclestone’s life at some time in 1971. He was the owner of the company that built March racing cars and eventually got himself elected as president of FIA.
Between Ecclestone and Mosley, the fate and future of F1 was sown up. They were two men with complementary styles: Ecclestone saw Mosley as a man who wanted everything absolutely clear (Mosley was a barrister and had studied physics) while Mosley decided that “Bernie can handle the lies”. (He was a second-hand car salesman at heart.)
Ecclestone would effectively end up running Foca while Mosley became president of FIA in 1991.
Today F1 is a multibillion-rand global business controlled by Ecclestone and he is most probably wheeling and dealing.
Not that one gets close to Ecclestone, who remains an enigma. It is what he does not comment and elaborate on that reveals the real Ecclestone.
It’s an engrossing book, perhaps more targeted at your petrol head than the general reader.
I am sure of two things in F1: the small silver-headed man who parades down the pit-lane, with perhaps a film star or two in tow, and the presence of a Ferrari or two on the grid.
For all the glamour and high profile of F1, it appears that wheel-ing and dealing still determines the future and I for one will watch the races on a Sunday with somewhat of a jaundiced eye.