Bernie Ecclestone

by Terry Lovell

  The effect of the super-lightweight cars became apparent at the 1982 Brazilian Grand Prix, the second race of the season, when Brabham’s Nélson Piquet and Williams’s Keke Rosberg finished first and second after Gilles Villeneuve in a Ferrari spun off. Ferrari and Renault, insisting that Ecclestone and Williams had raced illegal cars, protested to the FIA’s Court of Appeal. Enzo Ferrari went one stage further by blatantly challenging the rule book himself. Ferrari’s two cars – driven by Villeneuve and Didier Pironi – appeared at the following race, the USA West Grand Prix at Long Beach, with two rear wings to increase downforce. Villeneuve, who finished third, was duly disqualified, while Pironi, academically, spun off. Soon after the USA West Grand Prix, the FIA’s Court of Appeal announced its decision on the Brazilian Grand Prix. It stated that the ‘normal level of lubricant and coolant is that which is in the car when it crosses the finishing line, therefore no topping up of any kind is permitted’. With that, it retrospectively closed the loophole and disqualified Piquet and Rosberg. Alain Prost, in a Renault, who had come third, was classified as the winner. The decision incensed Ecclestone and Williams – and prompted Balestre, as quoted in a motor sport magazine, to issue a statement highly critical of the appeal court members.

  The FOCA requested the FISA to postpone the next race, the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, to give the constructors time to study the implications of the appeal court’s decision. The FISA rejected the request, which led to Ecclestone announcing that in that case the constructors would boycott the race, which, it was suspected, had been their protest plan all along. But it proved not to be the smartest of moves, given the fact that the Italians would turn up in their droves simply to watch the Ferraris in action. Indeed, record crowds attended the race, which saw Ferrari take first and second place, with Tyrrell third. While he fully supported the principle of the boycott, Ken Tyrrell decided to compete because, after the USA West Grand Prix, he had landed a three-race sponsorship deal – plus a one-off with an Italian ceramics company for the San Marino Grand Prix – which, with pressing bills to pay, he couldn’t afford to turn down. Tyrrell’s decision to race was of some historical importance, in that, for the first time, the great strength of the FOCA – its unity – had been weakened. It proved that the constructors’ power base was not invincible. For the teams who stayed away the boycott proved a political as well as a PR disaster.

  The constructors had also voted to boycott the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, just two weeks away. But, in the meantime, the FIA’s spring plenary conference was due to be held in Casablanca, which, with Balestre’s support, Ecclestone and Williams seized as a final opportunity to plead their case, alleging that the appeal court’s decision had, without the power or authority, introduced a change to the rule book. They were looking for a suspension of the appeal court’s decision pending an inquiry. Balestre had another agenda: a ten-point list of sweeping changes supposedly intended to unify Formula One. If they were not adopted, he warned, he would resign.

  It was seen as a hollow threat to mask a political ploy: their acceptance, of which he had every reason to be confident, would confer on him the tribute of the man who saved Formula One from self-destruction. The most controversial proposal, which was aimed at reducing the speed of turbos, was to impose a 200-litre fuel tank capacity. As turbos ran at that time on 215–230 litres such a ruling was predicted to be their death knell. It was further evidence, if any were needed, of the degree to which Balestre, who not so long ago had been behind the increase in the minimum car weight to the disadvantage of the FOCA teams, had turned to Ecclestone’s corner. So much time was spent discussing Balestre’s proposals that there remained little energy or interest to consider a plea on behalf of Ecclestone and Williams, for which few delegates had much sympathy anyway. The best that Balestre could achieve was to persuade the conference to agree to a seven-man committee to hear their arguments, which, after a two-hour hearing, duly rejected them. Balestre fared better with his onslaught on the turbos: the conference agreed to the implementation of the ten-point programme but that it should be postponed for six months.

  With immense commercial pressure on the constructors to get back to business, the FOCA voted to turn up at Zolder, with their cars ballasted to make the weight. With the memories of the great war still fresh, they had no stomach for another protracted and costly showdown with the manufacturers. Said a constructor: ‘We need to go racing because we are dependent on sponsorship. It is only the manufacturers that can afford a long-term boycott.’ Certainly the constructors had good reason to be concerned by the progress of the turbo engines. By now, Renault’s technical director, François Castaing, had overcome earlier problems that had caused more than one engine to blow, and, while Williams’s Rosberg went on to become the 1982 world champion despite winning only one Grand Prix, Renault and Ferrari came first and second in the Constructors’ Championship, with Pironi and Prost, of Renault, coming second and fourth in the World Championship title race.

  It was believed that qualified opposition at the conference to Balestre’s proposals was in no small part due to the influential and determined efforts of the Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM), the organisers of the Monaco Grand Prix and the Monte Carlo Rally, as well as manufacturers protecting their millions of dollars of investment in turbo engine development. Senior officials were far from pleased at the prospect of losing the following year their historical right to negotiate a highly lucrative contract with the American television company ABC TV, which it had enjoyed for 20 years, due to the Concorde Agreement giving the marketing of television rights to Ecclestone. The ACM, it was said, were not alone among the organisers in hoping that defeat for Ecclestone and Tyrrell at the conference would bring about their threat to boycott the Belgian Grand Prix, which, hopefully, would lead to a fresh conflict and result in a new peace pact, one which would restore television rights to the organisers.

  Hopes for the restoration of television rights to the ACM did not end with the conference at Casablanca. Rather, it was the beginning of notable public discord between the club’s president, lawyer Michel Boeri, and Balestre, which was said to have been enflamed by the Monégasque’s opposition to Balestre’s ten-point proposals. It was a confrontation which would lead to lawsuits, the involvement of President Mitterand of France and Prince Rainier of Monaco and an extraordinary statement by Balestre intended to demonstrate his independence of Ecclestone.

  A once active supporter of Grand Prix International, the organisation that had been set up by the Commission Sportive Internationale to break Ecclestone’s grip on the organisers, the ACM saw its troubles begin when Boeri signed a new five-year contract with ABC TV following the expiry of the contract at the end of 1983. Once the news reached Balestre’s ears, he moved to ensure that the Monaco Grand Prix, the glamour event of the season and of more promotional value to the sponsors than all the other races put together, was absent when in October 1984 the FISA announced the following season’s World Championship schedule. Balestre turned the screws tighter by threatening to expel the club from the FIA, thereby endangering even the future of the Monte Carlo Rally.

  Balestre explained his decision by stating that in signing a new contract with ABC TV, the club had pointedly ignored a warning issued at the FISA plenary conference in Paris two months earlier to the effect that any country not respecting the FIA’s television rights would not be given a World Championship round. Boeri believed he had done that by consulting Ecclestone as the FISA’s television rights negotiator, who, he said, had approved the terms of the contract signed in January 1984 between the television network and the FOCA. It had, he added, cost the ACM $300,000 to buy the rights back from ABC TV to cede them to the FOCA. Balestre remain unmoved. He argued that the contract was invalid for two reasons: it should have been for three years – not five – and, rather than ABC TV, the FISA might well have wanted another US network to cover the Monaco Grand Prix.

  Balestre was right – Ecclestone had jumped the gun
in agreeing the deal with Boeri. The television rights, under the terms of the Concorde Agreement, returned to the FIA at the end of 1984. At the same time Balestre seized the opportunity to make the following statement on his relationship with Ecclestone: ‘Some people … suggested that Balestre was in Ecclestone’s pocket, that all that was needed was to get Ecclestone’s agreement and Balestre would fall into line. When I got the agreement [between the ACM and the FOCA] on my desk, I sent a telex to Bernie telling him very strongly that he had no powers to deal with the FIA’s property – and that the agreement did not restore the FIA’s rights.’5

  It was, even by Balestre’s standards, an odd statement to make. It simply drew attention to what many people suspected to be the reality of their relationship. Those close to Balestre insisted that the statement was not, in fact, intended, as a rebuke of Ecclestone, but, rather, aimed at putting the ACM in its place for Boeri’s opposition at Casablanca. Said a former colleague: ‘Balestre wanted to do everything he could to damage Boeri [after the Casablanca conference], and one way was to stop the Monaco Grand Prix and the Monte Carlo Rally.’

  The ACM proceeded to issue a series of lawsuits against the FISA to test the legality of the FIA’s ownership of television rights, as claimed in the Concorde Agreement. Ensuing talks between the two sides failed to resolve the dispute, which rapidly escalated into a crisis leading to diplomatic discussions between senior officials of the Monaco government and senior aides to President Mitterand. Prince Rainier became personally involved by insisting that only he could take the final decision for the principality of Monaco. Five months later, in February 1985, three months before the Monaco Grand Prix was scheduled to take place, Boeri, accused by Balestre of involving the ACM in ‘suicidal madness’, was forced to concede defeat when a High Court of Justice in Paris refused to order the FIA to reinstate the Monaco Grand Prix on the calendar of the Formula One World Championship. The ban on the Monaco Grand Prix and the Monte Carlo Rally was lifted when Boeri agreed that TV rights would revert to the FIA, that all legal action against the FISA would be dropped and that the Automobile Club de Monaco would pay all the FISA’s legal costs.

  Boeri claimed that he had ‘not surrendered but signed a peace treaty’. Many years later he appeared to remain less than satisfied with the terms of that treaty, arguing that the organisers’ loss of TV rights led to a ‘uniformity’ which ‘resulted in a less efficient structure, at least as far as the Monaco Grand Prix was concerned’. At the same time, giving a forelock-tugging nod in Ecclestone’s direction, he conceded that ‘after 20 years of central marketing of the Formula One TV rights by Bernie Ecclestone, the exposure and success of this championship have achieved levels which were unthinkable only a few years ago, and this is advantageous for everybody, including the organisers’. As in all political wars, when the blood had been mopped up and egos restored to their former glory, it was not long before Balestre and Boeri became as one in the common political cause of Formula One. Boeri was appointed, with his former adversary’s endorsement, a vice-president of the FISA and, later, of the FIA.

  After the conference in Casablanca a disappointed Ecclestone, Mosley and Williams flew back to England in his hired Citation jet. (Disappointed, but not humourless – Ecclestone bought three sets of Arab robes complete with sandals and fez hats. It was agreed they would turn up at the next FOCA meeting dressed in the clothes to report on their trip to Casablanca, and they duly did.) The unresolved problem of turbos put Ecclestone in something of a quandary. For he had signed an exclusive 12-month agreement with BMW to use their turbocharged engines, and a series of tests at Silverstone had revealed that the Brabham BT51 BMW ran fractionally faster than the latest edition of the Cosworth-powered skirted BT49. In fact, Gordon Murray had been working on the BT50 BMW turbo, in which Nélson Piquet would win the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix, 12 months earlier. It was believed that Ecclestone was covering all options – if efforts to limit fuel-tank capacity of the turbos failed and the constructors had to run at a minimum weight of 580 kilograms, the turbo would prove Brabham’s salvation. Uncertain of which endgame Ecclestone was playing, BMW took the highly unusual step of issuing him with a public rebuke – that he should return Formula One to ‘responsible sports management’ – and an ultimatum: either use BMW engines or the company would terminate its co-operation with the team.

  Sponsors Marlboro and Elf were also concerned by Ecclestone’s activities, but for different reasons. As the tensions continued to mount between the constructors and the manufacturers over the minimum weight rule, they warned that their levels of sponsorship could only be maintained ‘within the framework of a stable sport’. They had good reason for such concern. With Balestre seemingly in Ecclestone’s camp and ‘skirts’ back on the cars, and the Concorde Agreement effectively not worth the paper it was written on, the idea was even mooted of two World Championships – one for FOCA constructors and the other for the turbo manufacturers – which, for the benefit of television, would run at the same race with separate prize money. Happily for Formula One, the idea was not pursued.

  Both sides eventually came to agree that ‘skirts’ should be banned and that there should be a reduction in the cars’ total plan area from 4.5 to 3.5 square metres, to produce narrower cars which, with rear wings moved forward, would generate less downforce. The manufacturers had earlier favoured a full flat bottom to reduce cornering speed but realised it would still generate ‘ground effect’. It was a dilemma that remained unresolved until October 1982, when Balestre obtained a force majeure mandate to issue a 13-point list of changes aimed principally at reducing speeds, and which would bury whatever remained of the Concorde Agreement.

  Included in the changes, which were to be introduced by the beginning of the following season, Formula One cars would, in opposition to the general consensus, have full flat bottoms; ‘skirts’ would be banned; the width of the rear wing and overhang would be reduced to decrease downforce; the minimum weight would be reduced from 580 to 540 kilograms; and fuel tank capacity would be reduced from 250 to 220 litres in 1984 and to 200 litres in 1985. The full flat bottom was the most radical change since the introduction of the 3-litre Formula One engine and, combined with the other rule changes, was greeted with almost universal criticism. The changes meant new designs, new cars and a lot more money. But Balestre, citing a number of accidents, claimed to have the public and drivers behind him. Ecclestone, Mosley and several leading constructors met with the manufacturers at Ferrari’s factory in Maranello and, contrary to expectations, agreed to the rule changes.

  There was one constructor, though, who would benefit from the changes – Bernie Ecclestone, who had committed the Brabham team to BMW’s turbo engines the previous year. Although McLaren, Williams and Lotus had by now agreed turbo deals with, respectively, Porsche, BMW and Renault, Ecclestone was at least a couple of laps ahead. As one constructor said: ‘We don’t know what is going on but … we’ve got a sneaking suspicion that flat bottoms fit very nicely into Brabham’s plans for 1983.’6 His suspicions, it seems, were not unfounded. Work on the flat-bottomed turbo BMW BT52 was by then well under way and completed with time to spare for the Brazilian Grand Prix in March, the first race of the 1983 season, which ended with Brabham’s Nélson Piquet winning his second World Championship title.

  The irony was that after all the bloody battles, after all the destructive upheaval and costly consequences, four years later, in October 1986, the FISA announced that turbo engines would be phased out of Formula One for safety reasons. It would also, added Balestre, give ‘a new boost’ to the World Championships and reduce costs. During the 1987 and 1988 seasons teams were given the option of using atmospheric engines of 3.5 litres and up to 12 cylinders, with a total ban on turbos beginning in the 1989 season.

  The relative peace brought to Formula One through the Concorde Agreement and Piquet’s World Championship title would soon be followed by another major event in Ecclestone’s life. Dora Tuana Tan, who years later
became a born-again Christian at Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London, had long departed from his life when he met his future wife in the paddock at the 1982 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

  She was a stunningly elegant and beautiful young Croatian model of twenty-three, Slavica Malic, who that year had joined the fashion house of Giorgio Armani, although she was at Monza to promote a range of Fila sportswear. Five feet eleven inches tall and twenty-eight years younger, she towered over the 5ft 6in-tall man by her side, with whom she seemed to have little in common, not least the ability to converse: she could speak hardly any English and Ecclestone wasn’t too fluent in Croat. With the aid of a language dictionary, she understood his invitation to have a Coca-Cola and to take refuge from the sun in his motor home. Accompanied by a colleague, a Dutch model who spoke fluent English, Slavica agreed. It was a brief meeting that came to a close with her giving him, at his request, her phone number, which, as he soon discovered, turned out to be a wrong number. She said: ‘I was young. I didn’t know him. I didn’t give my phone number to anyone.’

  Ecclestone, though, was smitten. He made enquiries and, through a photographer, tracked her down within a matter of days. This time, she not only gave him her correct phone number but also accepted an invitation to accompany him in his private jet to the Las Vegas Grand Prix a few days later. But not before having her nervous doubts calmed by a make-up artist friend. ‘I thought I was so young … and going to America? Can you imagine?’ But, despite suddenly being catapulted into a social stratosphere that she might have once only dreamt about, she did not care for the experience, or the inevitable sidelong glances. ‘I hated it, going out for stupid dinners with different people, business people, not talking … everybody giving me the dirty look … young girl, you know.’