Bernie Ecclestone

by Terry Lovell

  The article in L’Équipe led to an emergency meeting of the FOCA. It ended in perhaps the only way it could, with Ecclestone announcing that the constructors would be breaking away from the FIA. The FOCA, said Ecclestone, would be setting up the World Federation of Motor Sport (WFMS), which he described as ‘an independent, professionally-run sanctioning body’ to run a $10-million World Professional Drivers’ Championship, with a guarantee of $1 million to the winning driver. The WFMS, said Ecclestone, would be ‘made up of men with professional, commercial and sporting experience’ and would give a better deal in return for ‘the $70 million invested each year by the competitors and sponsors to produce the ultimate form of motor sport’. Balestre was quick to predict a brief and unhappy existence for the WFMS. ‘Let me tell you something,’ he warned through the media, ‘those people don’t know what they are in for, they don’t understand power, they’re just little men playing with toys, making cars in garages: who do they think they are?’

  Ecclestone’s reply was no less aggressive: ‘Who the hell is the FISA? They are a bunch of nobodies, they appointed themselves and they think they own racing, when all they really have is a bunch of clubs around the world and self-important people living off the back of the sport.’2 He also produced a stream of statistics to disprove Balestre’s claim that the manufacturers were too important to be excluded from any World Championship series. Since the inception of the World Championship in 1950, the manufacturers – Ferrari, Honda, Porsche, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Alfa Romeo and Lancia – had, on average, produced only 1.6 cars per Grand Prix. And in that season, 1980, out of 80 starts by the major manufacturers – Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Renault – only 30 had resulted in a finish, and out of that 30 only eight had competed on the same lap as the leader. His vituperative comments, plus the accompanying data, were, by the way, issued in a statement composed by Mosley, who was responsible for most of Ecclestone’s more controversial public pronouncements.

  The FOCA, whose members included seven of the top teams, and among whose ranks was the imminent world champion, Alan Jones, was certainly in a stronger position to fill the grid with more attractive teams. The FISA, on the other hand, had no more than four, without one driver in the top three of the 1980 championship. The FOCA had also legally binding contracts with virtually all the circuits. But in such a uniquely complex sport, in which so many financial and human elements had to work in unison for its successful exhibition, neither side, despite all the threats and belligerent rhetoric, could be sure of how the endgame would play out.

  Despite the apparent tactical advantage of the constructors, during the weeks it soon became apparent that they were in a most financially vulnerable position. Sponsors such as Goodyear, who supplied most of the FOCA teams, had already withdrawn in protest at the split, and other sponsors, increasingly nervous about the future of Formula One, were ready to follow. Under increasing financial pressures, the constructors were forced to lay off mechanics, introduce a three-day working week and cancel test sessions to save costs. In the days when Formula One in Britain was more of a cottage industry, with engines and a wide range of component parts supplied by outside companies, the constructors, whose talents, in the main, did not include prudent financial planning, were soon beset by cashflow problems, with credit drying up overnight. The wealthy manufacturers, with their in-house production, faced no such difficulties.

  The threat to the industries whose survival depended on the existence of the British teams was sufficiently serious for the conflict to be raised in the House of Commons. Tory MP Jonathan Aitken, who laid the blame at the door of Balestre and his associates, claimed that Formula One was heading towards a catastrophe of Grand Prix cancellations and company liquidations. Thousands of livelihoods would be lost and some famous small companies bankrupted. Unfair French tactics, he added, were being applied to Formula One through the FISA. Sports Minister Hector Monro responded by calling for an urgent meeting with his French counterpart to find a solution.3 The response from the French was not encouraging. It was strange, said a French government spokesman, to find that the British, ‘who do not normally mix sport with politics, [were now prepared] to change their policy’. There followed brief communications between the two governments that did nothing to resolve the conflict.

  As the weeks passed, and as the political and financial pressures mounted, Ecclestone encountered two major obstacles that would bring an end to the FOCA’s plans for a breakaway world championship series. It was unable to find the necessary insurance cover for its world championship, and circuits willing at first to work with the new organisation, even in the face of the threat of legal action by the FOCA, had a collective change of heart after Balestre warned of punitive disciplinary action against them. Through the national sporting authorities, the FISA made it clear to the circuit owners and promoters that if they sided with the FOCA they could forget about staging any other FIA-authorised motor sport event at their tracks. Without the revenue they generated during the rest of the year, the circuit owners feared the prospect of huge losses, if not closure. By the end of November 1980 the constructors were forced to accept the reality of their position. Six weeks after its birth, the World Federation of Motor Sport was no more.

  It is worth noting that for some weeks the constructors, apart from Ecclestone’s own Brabham team, had been testing cars without ‘skirts’, an indication that the constructors, without the financial resources to withstand a long-term war, were preparing for the inevitable. In announcing the end of the FOCA’s plans for a rival championship series, Ecclestone, perhaps in an attempt to save some face, declined to say whether the constructors would rejoin the FISA World Championship series. It was a position that he clarified, though, less than three weeks later, when he confirmed that the constructors had decided to race in the first three meetings of the 1981 season – which would turn out to be the USA West at Long Beach, Brazil and Argentina – but with ‘skirted’ cars. The FOCA did have an important legal incentive for returning to the FISA fold.

  As long as the constructors remained within the official World Championship series, the contracts that Ecclestone had with the circuit owners, which stipulated that races would be run to unchanged technical specifications, thereby allowing cars with ‘skirts’, carried the full force of law. Two weeks after Ecclestone had announced the end of the constructors’ breakaway series, the FOCA went to the High Court in London to obtain injunctions against eight circuits – Kyalami (South Africa), Long Beach (USA West), Zolder (Belgium), Dijon (France), the Österreichring (Austria), Monza (Italy), Gilles Villeneuve (Canada) and Zandvoort (Holland) – which prevented them from entering into similar agreements with any other party. It was done with the circuit owners’ knowledge, and indeed their support. It enabled them to turn to the FIA and say they had no choice but to side with the constructors.

  The decision to race with ‘skirts’ defied Balestre’s 1 December deadline, but in doing so the FOCA was shrewdly putting the pressure on him. The message was clear: let’s race – and talk. If Balestre had insisted that the deadline was inviolable, he would have been pilloried as the person ready to bring down Formula One simply to make a political point. Balestre also had Renault to consider. The manufacturer would not have been happy at seeing Balestre enforce the deadline. Although over cognac at his St Cloud home Balestre had been assured of Renault’s support, it was the more scheming Enzo Ferrari among the manufacturers who had been the driving force in favour of a ‘skirts’ ban, as well as an increase in the minimum weight, to give his turbo cars a significantly competitive edge over the constructors. If Renault were to back off, it might well have prompted Alfa Romeo and Talbot to follow suit, leaving only Ferrari to stand with Balestre. Indeed, Renault were to back off, but in remarkable circumstances that had nothing to do with the FOCA’s decision or the FISA’s deadline, but everything to do with the power of corporate image. It would bring about the beginning of the end of this most damaging conflict.

>   In addition to obtaining High Court injunctions against the circuit owners, the FOCA also had one issued against the FISA, as well as against every member of its executive committee, to block any attempts to interfere in the FOCA’s contracts with the circuits. High Court injunction or no, it failed to dissuade Balestre from doing his best to disrupt the FOCA’s plans. Accompanied by a senior FISA official and an interpreter, Balestre flew to America for a meeting in a New York hotel with senior members of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), who sanctioned the USA West Grand Prix on behalf of the national sporting authority, the Automobile Competition Committee for the United States (ACCUS). He wanted the SCCA to refuse to sanction the race, which was scheduled to open the season on 15 March – two months late due to the reigning mayhem. The race, he said, should not take place. Furthermore, he warned, if it went ahead, the manufacturers would not compete.

  Farcically, Balestre attempted to get round the High Court injunction by looking on as his interpreter read questions from a list he had compiled. Apparently Ecclestone had been informed in advance of the meeting and requested that the list be covertly retained to be used, if necessary, as evidence of Balestre’s breach of the injunction against him. By the end of the meeting, the list of questions, left on the table by the interpreter, had disappeared. The FOCA later pursued an action alleging against the FISA restraint of trade and interference with contract, although it was never heard. Balestre failed in his efforts to secure the support of the SCCA to get the USA West Grand Prix cancelled. But, more disastrously for him, a comment he made during the meeting resulted in a serious fracture, which in turn caused a fatal weakening in his relationship with Renault, which, in turn, led to a fatal weakening in the FISA’s stand against Ecclestone and the constructors.

  At that time Renault owned American Motors, and its senior management in America, fearful of the negative effect on its corporate image, were alarmed to hear the claim by Balestre that the manufacturers would not be racing alongside the constructors at Long Beach. A former FISA official who was at that meeting in the New York hotel said that from that moment ‘Renault spread the word that, with or without Balestre, they would be at Long Beach’, which was just weeks away. The decision by Renault proved a major blow to Balestre. It led to Enzo Ferrari deciding that his team, too, would race at Long Beach. Talbot and Alfa Romeo quickly fell in line to complete a full grid. The alliance between the manufacturers and Balestre was effectively over.

  Renault had already stood by uneasily to watch the constructors score a major point by staging a race in South Africa. It was intended by FOCA to replace the Argentine Grand Prix, which was due to raise the curtain on the 1981 season, but which the FISA was forced to cancel after the constructors had refused to take part. The event was held to prove that the real balance of power lay with the teams – they could stage a race, the governing body couldn’t. It was not only significant for the effect it had on Renault senior management, but also in seeding the ground for an historic Agreement, which would bring about a contractual and mostly peaceful alliance between the FOCA and the FISA. Its little-known inspiration was quite dramatic in its own right.

  With Formula One in a state of chaos and confusion, and with the constructors trying to survive the severe financial strain it was wreaking, the future looked more than bleak as Colin Chapman, Max Mosley, Teddy Mayer and his wife, attending the Hahnenkamm downhill ski race at Kitzbühel, Austria, sat down for dinner at a restaurant in a nearby village. During the evening Chapman’s curiosity had been aroused by a mural on a wall which depicted a scene of someone literally painting a cow as it grazed in a field. What did it mean, he asked a waitress. She explained that it was in remembrance of villagers who, under siege in a local battle and desperately low on food, attempted to deceive the besieging army into believing they had plenty of food by painting the same cow a different colour every day. Suddenly a light bulb came on in Chapman’s head. That’s it – the FISA, and Balestre in particular, had to be deceived into believing that the FOCA had the financial resources to stage its own races. At their hotel, they went to Mosley’s bedroom and called Ecclestone. His response was instant: ‘You’re all pissed.’

  In truth, that was not far off the mark, but the next day the idea was pursued, and Ecclestone, as he listened to the rationale of its guile, came to agree. Once the manufacturers, with all their tens of millions of dollars invested in Formula One, saw that the constructors could go it alone, the effect, it was calculated, could prove a decisive factor in weakening a resolve that was not very strong in the first place. The much-strapped teams were persuaded to go with it, and started to make arrangements for cars and personnel to be air-freighted with the help of some credit, while the tyres, no longer available from Goodyear, came from Ecclestone’s International Race Tire Services. The South African Grand Prix, scheduled on the FIA calendar for 7 February, would take place, announced the FOCA.

  Balestre attempted to scupper the FOCA’s plans by the simple ploy of arbitrarily announcing that the date of the South African Grand Prix was being put back to 11 April, which created a serious problem for the circuit owners, Kyalami Enterprises. Far from the most financially stable of Formula One Grands Prix, Kyalami Enterprises had succeeded in securing a lucrative sponsorship deal with office-equipment manufacturers Nashua, which had geared its promotional plans for 7 February, and whose financial support was contractually contingent upon that date. For that reason, and because of the uncertain state of the 1981 season, Kyalami Enterprises had sought from the FISA, and received by telex in early December, confirmation of the February slot.

  Following talks with Ecclestone, Kyalami Enterprises refused to accept the FISA’s decision. They also reminded Balestre, at Ecclestone’s suggestion, that there was a High Court injunction compelling the circuit owners to fulfil the conditions of the contract with the FOCA on the agreed date. Balestre’s response was to downgrade the race to a Formula Libre event, which, stripped of its Grand Prix status, could not count for World Championship points. Nevertheless, the race, which was won by Carlos Reutemann in a Williams FW07-Ford, went ahead, albeit in appalling weather conditions. The absence of the manufacturers, not least the crowd-pulling Ferraris, combined with poor advance publicity and promotion caused by its uncertain fate, resulted in a poor spectator audience. But, crucially, it received international television coverage, leaving senior Renault executives to consider the cost to the company’s image and massive team budget of playing in Balestre’s power battle. By the time Balestre went to New York, his gaffe in stating that Renault would not be taking part in the USA West Grand Prix was enough to cause the manufacturer to switch sides.

  Renault’s decision hit Balestre all the harder because he had been convinced that the solidarity of the FISA and the manufacturers would win the day. A former senior FIA official said that Balestre believed that, but for Renault breaking ranks, ‘the constructors would have had to say, “OK, [we] will sign with the FIA.” This is how the war would have been won if Renault had not betrayed Balestre.’ Victory for the FISA on Balestre’s terms, he added, had been ‘very close’. Indeed it had. Said Mosley: ‘We were absolutely skint. If Balestre could have held the manufacturers’ support for a little bit longer, the constructors would have been on their knees. The outcome then could have been very different.’ The decision to stage a race in South Africa had been, he added, a ‘masterstroke’.

  But even before Kyalami, Balestre was being edged out into the cold. Enzo Ferrari, a principal protagonist who was now keen to be seen as a peacemaker, invited Ecclestone, Mosley and the ‘grandis’ to a meeting at his factory in Maranello on 16 January. Over the next few weeks it led to a series of meetings between Max Mosley, for the FOCA, Marco Piccinini, for the manufacturers, Renault’s lawyer Ronnie Austin and a lawyer from the FIA, from which emerged a peace agreement that came to be known as the Maranello Agreement. Piccinini, with his faultless French, reported the discussions to Balestre.

  The proposals gave
the constructors and manufacturers what they had always wanted: for the FOCA, which accepted without qualification the banning of ‘skirts’, a minimum period of two years’ notice to cover technical rule changes, plus a minimum of four years’ stability on all major changes; and, for the manufacturers, that the technical rules should be the exclusive governance of the FISA. It was all as simple as that, and yet had been so difficult and costly to achieve.

  It led to a revamping of the Formula One Commission, which gave greater representation and power to the constructors and manufacturers. It was agreed that the Commission would comprise three constructors and three manufacturer representatives; four race organisers – two European and two overseas; two sponsors – one constructor and one manufacturer; and one FISA representative. The FISA’s executive committee could accept or reject the Commission’s recommendations, but it couldn’t amend them. (Four years later the work of the new Commission was complemented by a Permanent Bureau consisting of Balestre, Ecclestone and Marco Piccinini, Ferrari’s team manager, to respond to problems requiring immediate resolution.)

  The FOCA retained the right to negotiate freely with organisers and promoters in all areas of its commercial activities. In a separate document it was agreed that Ecclestone would receive eight per cent of the gross – ‘less than a standard agency commission,’ he said4 – which, given an estimated $500,000 from each of the season’s 15 races, represented an attractive cut nonetheless. Most importantly, though, the agreement left the teams with what would turn out to be the most valuable asset of all, the jewel in the Formula One crown – the marketing of the television rights, which were now being sold in 95 countries with a global viewing audience, according to FOCA figures, exceeding one billion. It was agreed that while the FIA would have sole and exclusive proprietorship of all broadcasting rights, they would be assigned to the FOCA for Ecclestone to market, the proceeds of which would be distributed among the teams. Surprisingly in the circumstances perhaps, the FIA didn’t receive a sou. It wasn’t until 1987, with a share of 30 per cent, that it began to enjoy a share of the proceeds. Certainly Balestre had coveted the revenue of the television rights for the FIA’s coffers. They had been, it was suspected, his primary motive in his bid to seize control of the FOCA’s commercial interests. At the height of the war with the FOCA he had actually tried to negotiate the sale of television rights to two major networks through the public-relations division of the French oil company Elf. His efforts came to naught after the constructors’ withdrawal from the World Championship series caused the marketable value of the rights to plunge.