Bernie Ecclestone

Name: Bernie Ecclestone

Nationality: Great Britain

Date of birth: 28 okt 1930

Submitted for 2 grand prixs in 1958, failed to qualify the first and didn't start at the second at all.

It was clear that racing wasn't "to be" for Bernie ecclestone but.............

Born in Ipswich in Suffolk, Ecclestone was the son of a trawler captain and he spent his childhood in the town of Wangford, near Southwold. The family then moved to Bexleyheath in southeast London and Ecclestone left school at 16 and went to work at the local gasworks where his father had a friend who was in charge of the chemical laboratory. He was as an assistant there. His passion was motorcycle scrambling and he began competing in the immediate postwar era. As machinery was scarce he began buying and selling motorcycle spare parts doing the business during his lunch break. He built up the spares business and then went into business with Fred Compton to form the Compton & Ecclestone motorcycle dealership. He later bought out Crompton and built the business into one of Britain biggest motorcycle dealers. In 1949 he tried his hand at four-wheeled racing in the 500cc Formula 3 series but after a big accident at Brands Hatch, in which he ended up hitting a car in the car park behind Paddock Hill Bend, he decided to concentrate on business which grew to include the Weekend Car Auctions firm (which he eventually sold to British Car Auctions), property and finance.

In 1957 Ecclestone returned to the sport as manager of Welsh racing driver Stuart Lewis-Evans. He bought the F1 Connaught team and ran the cars for Lewis-Evans, Roy Salvadori, Archie Scott-Brown and Ivor Bueb. He even tried to qualify one of the cars himself at Monaco in 1958. At the end of that year Lewis-Evans, who was by then driving a Vanwall, suffered serious burns when his engine blew up during the Moroccan GP and died as a result. Ecclestone abandoned the sport again but in the early 1960s his friendship with Salvadori, who was by then running the Cooper team, led to a meeting with Jochen Rindt. Ecclestone became Rindt's manager and business partner and in 1968 and 1969 he was involved in running the Lotus Formula 2 factory team which was running Rindt and Graham Hill.

In September 1970 Rindt was on his way to winning the World Championship fro Lotus when he was killed in an accident at Monza. He became posthumous World Champion.

Ecclestone again quit the sport but at the start of 1972 he decided to buy the Brabham team from Ron Tauranac and set about turning it into a winning force. In an effort to get the sport more organized he was one of the founders of the Formula 1 Constructors Association in 1974, along with Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Max Mosley, Ken Tyrrell and Frank Williams. He led the team owners in a battle with the FIA in 1975 for a new system of entries and appearance money being paid to all the teams. In 1976 the teams won the battle and there began to be trouble over the sale of TV rights. In January 1978 Ecclestone became chief executive of FOCA with Mosley as his legal advisor and a new battle began with the FIA's new affiliate FISA which was the brainchild of Frenchman Jean-Marie Balestre. The battle for the commercial control of the sport continued until March 1981 when the Concorde Agreement gave FOCA the right to negotiate TV contracts. That year Brabham won the World Championship with Nelson Piquet driving. There would be a second victory in 1983 with BMW engines.

At the end of the first Concorde Agreement in 1987 Ecclestone became the FIA Vice-President in charge of Promotional Affairs and began to spend less time on Brabham. At the end of that year the team lost its sponsorship and Ecclestone decided to take a year out of racing. He sold the team to Alfa Romeo in preparation for the new Procar Championship but when that was canceled because of lack of interest Alfa Romeo sold the team to Swiss businessman Joachim Luhti.

The sale of TV rights originally belonged to all the teams but the others withdrew as in the 1980s the business was risky and not very profitable. In the years that followed Ecclestone distanced himself from the other team owners and gradually took over all the promotional rights of F1 himself - taking huge financial risks which the others would not agree to. In order to do this he created Formula One Promotions and Administration, which was independent of FOCA.

The risks paid off and in 1993 Ecclestone hit the headlines when he became the highest salary-earner in British history with nearly $45m. he paid himself the same the following year.

Bernie's earning has created jealousy among some of the team owners who worked with him in the early days who argued that they had a right to more of his millions that he was willing to pay them and after a lengthy battle he increased the team's share of the TV profits from 33% to 47%.

Eventually an agreement was reached for a 10-year deal with the teams and a 15-year deal with the FIA. Once this had been agreed Ecclestone began to plan for the flotation of his company.

The European Commission began an investigation into the Formula 1 business and eventually this led to the flotation being cancelled and in 1999 Ecclestone issued a $1.4bn Eurobond, secured on the future profits of the company. Later that year he sold 12.5% of the business to the venture capitalist company Morgan Grenfell Private Equity for $325m. In February 2000 sold another 37.5% to the San Francisco investment company Hellman & Friedman for $725.5m. These two then combined their shares and sold them to Thomas Haffa of EM.TV in exchange for $1.65bn in cash and shares.

The Ecclestone Family still controls 50% of the company and, despite heart surgery in June 1999 Ecclestone remains firmly in charge of F1 and in July 2000 concluded a deal with the FIA to exploit the commercial rights of the Formula 1 World Championship for the next 100 years. Ecclestone agreed to pay the FIA a total of $360m, with a downpayment of $60m followed by an annual sum of $3m.

BACKhome <---------------------------------