by Terry Lovell
Shortly after arriving at Caesar’s Palace, she also began to have doubts about the sexuality of the worldly-wise, jet-hopping businessman. When they arrived at the luxurious hotel, its president, Billy Weinberger, greeted them personally and accompanied the couple to their huge suite comprising a living room, two bathrooms and two bedrooms. Weinberger followed Ecclestone into one of the bedrooms and closed the door. The two men remained in the bedroom for some while, but engaged in nothing more passionate than business. Slavica, though, unused to Ecclestone’s love of business regardless of the hour of the day or circumstance, suspected the worst. With the business finally done, followed by Weinberger’s departure, Slavica kept her fears to herself. It was some time before she shared them with a much-amused Ecclestone, who, by that time, had long proved himself to be soundly heterosexual.
Two years later Ecclestone, at the age of 54, became a father for the second time. Slavica gave birth to Tamara, the first of their two daughters, in Milan. Three months later she arrived in England to set up home with Ecclestone in a rented apartment in Pier House, Oakley Street, Chelsea, which Ecclestone subsequently bought and sold to his friend Flavio Briatore, the then Benetton team boss. The following year, on 17 July 1985, the couple were married at Kensington and Chelsea Registry Office, after Ecclestone, in a by-the-way proposal, said they should get married, a solemn occasion which didn’t quite go as planned.
Ecclestone made arrangements for the wedding to take place about a week later, which included a phone call to Mosley asking him if he had a few minutes to spare on the allotted day. He was getting married, he explained, and needed a witness. Mosley readily agreed and arrived to notice that a second witness, as required under UK law, turned out to be a home help employed by Ecclestone. Everything went smoothly until the registrar noticed that she didn’t speak English, a factor which immediately disqualified her. Mosley came to the rescue with an urgent call to his secretary, Jacqueline Self, who arrived by taxi 20 minutes later for the ceremony’s successful completion. Then, for Ecclestone, it was back to business. There was no honeymoon. Nor, come to that, was there a photographer to record the joyful occasion.
In December 1988 Slavica gave birth to their second daughter, Petra, and settled down to a life much devoted to the care of her children. By the end of the next decade, she would be the richest woman in Britain.
Notes
1. Autosport, 11 September 1980.
2. Sunday Times, 14 December 1980.
3. Autocar, 10 January 1981.
4. The Times, 18 January 1982.
5. Autosport, 18 October 1984.
6. Autocar, 23 October 1982.
8
BRABHAM TAKEN FOR A SWISS ROLL
There have not been many events in Bernie Ecclestone’s life that have not been tainted by controversy. And it was so when Brabham lead driver Nélson Piquet won his second World Championship title in 1983, and the team came third in the Constructors’ Championship. Piquet’s success had been achieved, it was later alleged, by the use of illegal fuel, most effectively at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, which he won with octane levels of 102.8 RON and 102.9 RON respectively, well over the legal limit of 102 RON. It was also alleged that Piquet’s fuel had been 0.5 RON over the legal limit at the British Grand Prix, where he came second, and 0.8 at the German Grand Prix, where an engine fire caused his retirement. In the final race of the season, the South African Grand Prix, Piquet came third, which gave him sufficient points to sneak the title – 59 to Prost’s 57.
Protests by Renault and Ferrari were dismissed by Balestre as ‘contradictory and unfounded’, a statement that demonstrated yet again the remarkable entente cordiale that now existed between the FISA’s president and Ecclestone, made all the more remarkable by the fact that the zealously patriotic Frenchman was standing against the interests of a French team and driver. Such was his enthusiasm to defend the Brabham team that he produced what he described as an official telex from the Institut Français du Pétrole, which stated that for an octane rating of 102, ‘a value of 102.9 was proper’. Britain’s Royal Automobile Club, asked to undertake analyses for the Grand Prix of Europe, confirmed ‘a tolerance of 0.9 at 102 RON’. But Renault claimed that the FISA had supplied ‘inaccurate or distorted’ data. A tolerance of 0.9, the company argued, applied to ‘the co-efficient of repeatability’ and was often confused with the ‘accepted tolerance’. Neither Renault nor Ferrari pressed for Piquet’s disqualification; rather, they wanted clarification of fuel regulations. That finally came 11 months later, and merely served to underscore Balestre’s inconsistency. He insisted that fuel octane levels must not exceed ‘as it frequently does now -102 RON, as defined in the FIA rule book’.
Prost, who went on to win four World Championship titles, viewed the defeat as the biggest regret of his career. ‘To this day I still consider we won. Everyone knew the fuel used by Piquet’s Brabham was not legal and, from the summer onwards, the lead we had was steadily nibbled away. We could have protested: I wanted to, but Renault management didn’t, and at that time I didn’t have enough weight to influence the decision. Renault deserved the title.’1 A former senior technical adviser to the FISA confirmed the existence of a report based on the analyses of fuel used in the Brabham car. It was deliberately suppressed, he added, to prevent it going through ‘the normal channels, as a result of which Brabham would have been disqualified. Renault could have lodged a protest and they would have won, but they dropped the matter because they wanted to become champions “on the green carpet” – in other words, on the track, rather than the boardroom.’
The next couple of seasons proved mediocre for Brabham, with Piquet finishing fifth and eighth in the World Championship. Designer Gordon Murray was also having problems with his latest design, the BT53, which, in the middle of the 1984 season, underwent major surgery with new bodywork, aerodynamics and cooling system. But the team was dealt a major blow when Piquet, who had been with Brabham since 1978 to team up with Niki Lauda, decided to quit at the end of the 1985 season. It was over something very close to Ecclestone’s heart – money. The relationship between them had been strained for some time over the issue. Ecclestone was incensed when Piquet, at the South African Grand Prix in 1983, the last race of the season, allowed teammate Riccardo Patrese and Alfa Romeo’s Andrea de Cesaris to overtake him, knowing that the World Championship title was in the bag. Fumed Ecclestone: ‘I don’t pay drivers to lose races.’ To which Piquet responded: ‘You get paid so little by Bernie that you have to get something else out of it – and [all] I wanted was the World Championship.’2
But Piquet’s demand for a substantial increase in his retainer left Ecclestone unmoved. Like Enzo Ferrari, he believed it was the car and not the driver that won a race, and refused to budge. It was, recalled a member of the team, a row over ‘peanuts’. He added: ‘It was a really stupid argument over a tiny bit of additional money, but Bernie wouldn’t back down. Piquet was a brilliant driver, and he was part of the core of the team. It was a pretty bitter pill to swallow because we had no one else to replace him.’ It was a predicament that Ecclestone attempted to resolve by making an approach to Niki Lauda, who had announced his retirement by walking out on Brabham six years earlier only to return to win his third world title with McLaren the previous season before announcing that he was retiring once again, but this time for good.
Ecclestone attempted to dissuade him with an offer that was substantially more than what Piquet had been looking for, but far short of what would satisfy Lauda, which was an annual retainer of £5.5 million. The main sponsor, Olivetti, willing to pick up half of what Ecclestone was offering, declined to dig deeper to satisfy Lauda’s demand. It brought their negotiations to an abrupt end. According to a senior member of the Brabham team, Ecclestone’s obduracy in his negotiations with Piquet was a major miscalculation, and would prove a significant factor in the team’s future.
Piquet, who joined the Williams team to
finish third in the 1986 World Championship and take his third World Championship title the following year, was finally replaced by Elio de Angelis, a 27-year-old Italian, who, after just four races with Brabham, was killed in a 180mph crash while testing at the Paul Ricard circuit on 15 May 1986. The cause of the crash was a suspected component failure. The car went out of control through the second, right-hand half of the Verrerie S-bend at the end of the pit straight. De Angelis died hours later in hospital.
The news hit Murray badly. Of all the cars he had designed there had barely been a serious injury to a driver. De Angelis was killed in Murray’s latest car, the revolutionary ‘low-line’ BT55, which positioned the driver in a far more horizontal position. The central problem was that the design of the car, the first all-carbon, was too radical for the installation of the BMW engine – redesigned so that it could lie almost flat in the chassis – to work. Years later Murray blamed himself for the car’s lack of competitiveness. ‘We could never get the engine installation to work, and, in retrospect, it was totally my fault. It was far too much to try and do in the few months we had to design and get it ready … it was a very, very radical car.’ But the death of de Angelis proved to be the final straw for Murray.
The departure of Piquet, and now the death of the young Italian, caused Murray to suffer a massive loss of interest in his work. There was also another factor: his relationship with Ecclestone had become increasingly strained. For the first time he seriously began to consider his future at Brabham, even in Formula One itself. ‘I was beginning to think that we were going nowhere as a company. Bernie, with his other activities, was not concentrating on getting ongoing sponsorship contracts and replacing Nélson Piquet.’ It seemed to Murray that the good times, the giant-killing days, when Brabham, with a small budget and team, took on, and beat, the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and, later, Williams, when Ecclestone would hold ‘board meetings’ with him and team manager Herbie Blash over a pint and a sandwich – or Ecclestone’s favourite, egg and chips with lashings of brown sauce – in the Star pub in Leatherhead Road, Chessington, down the road from the works, were long over. (It was not unusual for Ecclestone to use the pub for a working lunch with international businessmen and politicians. According to Blash, it was the setting for negotiations between John Bannon, the then prime minister of South Australia, and Ecclestone for the first Australian Grand Prix, in Adelaide in 1985.)
In this deeply unsettled frame of mind, Murray, after playing a major role in Brabham’s two World Championships and 22 Grand Prix wins, decided it was time to move on. When he broke the news to Ecclestone, he believes that it came as no surprise. ‘I was pissed off, and I could see he was pissed off. I said I was going to stop, and he said, “Fine.” That was it.’ There was no attempt by Ecclestone to change Murray’s mind. It was never his style, not even for someone so crucial to the team. His departure, in November 1986, brought to an end an association of 14 years, many of them as a director of Motor Racing Developments, owners of the Brabham team. Murray’s decision to leave Brabham was one of the toughest of his career, but he had reason to believe that at least he would not suffer financially. For on the strength of a handshake given some years earlier, Ecclestone, said Murray, had ‘talked about’ a share in the company. But he was to be seriously disappointed.
Ecclestone managed to persuade him that the company was worth little. Murray found himself agreeing to a one-off payment of £30,000, and signing a document relinquishing all further interest or claims on the company. ‘I was very disappointed with the financial settlement after all those years of hard work and all the success, but on the positive side it taught me a valuable lesson for the future – I would never enter another working relationship without a well-constructed written contract.’ He added philosophically: ‘I have no regrets. I should have known better.’
In Ecclestone’s view, ‘dear old Gordon’ had been a tad unfair in his interpretation of events. ‘Actually, it [£30,000] was a large chunk of money [in those days].’ (In 2002 it would have been worth £55,800.) He claimed at first that it had been Murray who had ‘established’ the sum of £30,000, ‘not me’. But added a few moments later: ‘If I told you I could remember, I would be lying. But it wasn’t a “take this or get nothing” offer, OK? Because that is not my style. I wouldn’t do that.’ Murray was also given, at his request, the BT49 car in which Piquet won the 1982 Grand Prix. ‘He said he would never sell it, but subsequently did.’
Some nine months later Ecclestone reportedly received an offer of £15 million from Jesús Gil, the president of Atlético Madrid football club, shortly after Gil, as Ecclestone’s VIP guest, visited the 1987 German Grand Prix. It is Ecclestone’s recollection that no figure was mentioned by Gil, although he was quoted as saying at the time that ‘there may have to be an adjustment to the sum suggested … but there is no way I will be persuaded to dispose of it unless I have the assurance that it will continue to be operated in its present form and with the same efficiency and dedication which my staff have shown me for so many years.’3
Although the proposed deal fell through – a condition of its purchase was that Ecclestone would invest the money in Atlético Madrid – it gives ground to believe that the company was worth considerably more than Murray had apparently been given to understand. Murray went on to join McLaren International to lead its restructured design team, where he negotiated a contract so detailed that it covered even the style of clothes he could wear.
As with Ron Tauranac and Colin Seeley before him, Murray had the cold comfort of knowing that smarter businessmen than he had come off second best in dealing with Ecclestone. Their skills and expertise are in design and engineering. Give them a profit-and-loss account and the shutters come down. In Ecclestone’s hands, they were innocents abroad. The evidence of their experiences does little to confirm his oft-quoted comment in media interviews that his word and his handshake are sounder than any contract. ‘What I’ve done,’ he said in one newspaper interview, ‘I’ve done honestly and correctly. I’ve never done anything bad to anyone in my life. I’ve never cheated anybody. If I do a deal, I don’t need to write it down on paper. Everyone knows I won’t go back.’4
Ecclestone’s response to the offer from Jesús Gil confirmed what some had suspected for some time, that he was ready to sell the Brabham team for the right offer. There had been rumours a couple of years earlier that he had had talks with Ford, which, if true, came to nothing. But Murray’s departure – Ecclestone was once quoted as saying that he would sell the team if Murray ever quit – added considerably to his problems. Three months earlier BMW had announced that it would be ending its four-year association with the Brabham team at the end of the year, explaining that if it were to remain in Formula One it would want to build its own car, rather than be a supplier of engines, which was too costly; instead, it intended to concentrate on saloon-car racing. But things for Ecclestone would get worse.
The 1987 season was humiliatingly dreadful for Brabham. Lead driver Riccardo Patrese came thirteenth in the World Championship and the team eighth in the Constructors’ Championship. Brabham’s tyre contract with Pirelli was coming to an end, the team’s major sponsorship deal with Olivetti was running out, and Patrese and his fellow Italian Andrea de Cesaris were on the move – respectively to Williams and German millionaire Hans Gunther Schmidt’s new team, Rial. Confirming Murray’s claim that Ecclestone had begun to show increasingly little interest in getting new sponsors, a former senior member of his staff said: ‘We used to get people phoning up and say, “We are giving you all this money, could we have a photograph of the new car, please,” and they would end up being put through to the receptionist, who had no idea what they were talking about. That was about our level of commitment to the sponsors.’
It was believed the moribund state of the Brabham team had come about because Ecclestone, now 57, was finding greater pleasure and personal profit in pursuing the riches of Formula One’s commercial activities, which was taking
him into the centre of the FIA establishment he had once so openly despised. Ownership of the Brabham team had served its purpose in establishing his power base, but he was a businessman first and a frustrated racer second, and he was, said a former team manager, ‘no longer interested in knowing whether there were three engines ready for the next race, or why they blew up at the last one’. For Ecclestone it was time to move on. By the beginning of 1988 he had still to find replacements for Patrese and de Cesaris, as well as a new engine supplier. There had also been little progress made on replacing the BT56 built by David North – a long-standing colleague of Murray who was now the team’s chief designer – and designed around the unsuccessful BT55. The fortunes of Ecclestone’s Motor Racing Developments, which owned the Brabham team assets, were also dipping sharply. Company returns for that year showed a net loss of £3.63 million compared with net profits of £2.5 million two years earlier.
Although there was no official word from the Brabham team’s Chessington works, the deadline for entries in the 1988 World Championship series – 31 January – passed without the FISA receiving an application from Ecclestone, the first time Brabham had missed the line-up in 26 years. It wasn’t until the Brazilian Grand Prix in April that Ecclestone announced that the team would be pulling out of Formula One after two ‘disastrous years’ with the BMW engine. Ecclestone gave no indication of his personal plans, but the pit gossip was that, whatever the future of the team, he wouldn’t be at the wheel. It proved to be accurate: Ecclestone sold Motor Racing Developments to Alfa Romeo for an undisclosed sum. It was Alfa Romeo’s plan to design and build, with the Brabham team’s expertise, a car to take part in a much-hyped new event for manufacturers called the Production Car World Championship, and which was due to start in 1990. With the support of both Ecclestone and the FISA president, Jean-Marie Balestre, its success was considered assured.