by Terry Lovell
However, it was in the power of planning regulations, rather than in the judgement of a court, where Wheatcroft held his trump card. The planning consent given to DVLL by North West Leicestershire District Council’s special planning committee on 8 January came with a statutory section 106, which legally obligates parties to sign an agreement to ensure certain provisions. Primarily, in this instance, the committee insisted on DVLL providing a satisfactory traffic-management plan, which was crucial to the special planning committee’s granting of consent, and which was largely based on park-and-drive zones situated in the neighbouring counties of Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. The plan, a multi-agency collaboration also involving the emergency services, required not only the signature of the leaseholder, DVLL, but also that of the freeholder, Tom Wheatcroft, to ensure that in the event of a change of lease, the council was able to enforce it against the freeholder.
As the months passed, requests put by the council to DVLL for Wheatcroft’s signature came to nought. In mid-April Wheatcroft indicated to the council that while he was prepared to sign the 106, he was not prepared to do so until the legal proceedings he had taken out against DVLL for the non-payment of rent arrears had been resolved at Derby County Court, which, at the time of writing, was due to take place on June 8. At a meeting of the council’s planning committee on May 6, alarmed members of the planning committee agreed a deadline of June 30 for the agreement to be signed by Wheatcroft. Steve Bambrick, the district council’s Director of Planning, said: ‘If the agreement remains unsigned by the end of June, we have said that we will no longer grant planning permission and we will instead refuse planning permission.’ It would at a stroke bring an end to Gillett’s oft-stated vow that come what may the grand prix would be staged at Donington in 2010.
He had been no less bullish, when fending questions from the media over a period of several months about DVLL’s source of funding, in claiming that all would be revealed in a financial package that he would announce at the end of March, an occasion which came and went without comment or detail. At about the time the planning committee was meeting to impose a 106 deadline, Gillett was explaining on BBC TV how the all-important debenture scheme, at the heart of DVLL’s funding plans, had gone belly up due to the global economic crisis. ‘The world of banking has changed,’ he said. ‘The bank we were planning to work with at that point has decided they were not in the market anymore, so we had to go and find alternative banks and there are banks in the market for it and we are just working through the details on this.’8
Gillett continued to remain remarkably optimistic, insisting that he had a nine-month construction programme. ‘We’ve always known that we can construct everything we have to do in nine months,’ he said. He had to be in a position to ‘roll everything out’ by the beginning of July to meet a completion date of, ironically, some would say, of 1 April 2010. ‘I am absolutely confident that we can meet that date,’ he added. But others were not quick to share his confidence. Said Bambrick: ‘Delivering what needs to be delivered for July 2010 is achievable but only just. From my perspective, partly because DVLL are relatively new and therefore we have not had a long-standing relationship with them, and partly because of things that have happened in the last six months, particularly around the planning application and the 106 agreement, they haven’t exactly got a glorious track record for delivering things on time. Purely on that basis, there has to be questions.’
The collapse of the debenture scheme, and, more so, the debacle with Tom Wheatcroft, had left Ecclestone unhappy, but insistent that, despite media speculation, he had no intention of injecting any of his own money in DVLL although he admitted that he had been talking through the ‘money situation’ with Gillett. ‘I’m trying to help him sort things out. What he really needs is an investor, that’s the best hope of saving the race,’ he said. He was equally adamant that he had no designs on taking over Donington on his terms and at his price. Gillett, in a BBC TV interview, acknowledged the vulnerability of his position. He said: ‘If he wanted to do that, he has the ability to do that, I’m quite sure. But as it is at the moment, we are working very well together, and I don’t see any hint of that.’
If Gillett misses the deadline, there would be no British Grand Prix in 2010, said Ecclestone. He rubbished media reports quoting him as saying that the British Grand Prix would go overseas for 2010 and return to Donington for 2011, by which time the circuit would be ready. ‘It won’t go overseas,’ he said. ‘There just won’t be a British Grand Prix. We can’t just suddenly put the British Grand Prix in France or Italy or somewhere.’ He emphatically ruled out a temporary return to Silverstone, a solution that both teams and fans alike would prefer. ‘The answer is no. We left there for a reason and nothing has changed since. They’ve had plenty of opportunities – the time and the money – (but) they’ve gone off on their own way, doing things the way they wanted things, so that’s it.’
Damon Hill, and other leading F1 figures, suggested that the FIA was duty bound to ensure that certain historical grand prix events such as the British Grand Prix were held, a proviso said to be enshrined in the Concorde Agreement. But, as ever in Formula One, unless it suited either Mosley or Ecclestone, it was not necessarily to be observed. As Mosley explained: ‘The FIA’s deal with the Bernie means he cannot present a calendar without the traditional grands prix. However, it is not our role to insist that a grand prix takes place in a sub-standard venue.’9
In the current circumstances, the chances of a British Grand Prix for 2010 at Donington Park might appear to be bleak, but Ecclestone has the connections and the muscle to make it happen against the tightest of deadlines. He will certainly not want to be associated with the embarrassment of a disaster – albeit to the quiet delight of the Silverstone management - made possible by his judgement of two unknown businessmen who, without a scintilla of experience of motorsport between them, went on to plunge Formula One into yet another glorious fiasco.
The extraordinary degree to which organisers and circuit owners feared Ecclestone, and which exists in more moderate form to this day, is indicated by an incident involving his helicopter at Silverstone in the mid-eighties. With his pilot at the controls, it landed in a prohibited area and demolished a number of marquees, causing damage to cars, as well as slight injuries, it was claimed, to a number of people.
Circuit manager Chris Kelf arrived on the scene and ‘created merry hell’. Ecclestone was unapologetic. ‘His attitude was: “I’m Bernie Ecclestone, I’ll put my helicopter down where I want to,”’ said Kelf. The incident was reported to the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, responsible for investigating such incidents and their prosecution, by air-traffic controllers who were on duty at Silverstone to supervise the landing of light aircraft. To Kelf’s relief – ‘it was all brushed over because it was Bernie’ – there was no official inquiry. It would have almost certainly attracted the interest of the media and caused embarrassment to Ecclestone, which, as Kelf quickly discovered, was the last thing that the Silverstone management wanted.
In fact, because of their concern over the harm it might cause to their relationship with Ecclestone, it was Kelf who found himself in trouble – ‘the management had a go at me’ – for daring to rebuke Ecclestone. As for the damage to the cars and the injuries to the members of the public – ‘it was nothing dramatic’ – it was ‘all quietly sorted out’.
According to Ecclestone, it was his chequebook that sorted it out after the helicopter hire company refused to pay for the damage caused to cars by wheels sent spinning from a display overturned by the helicopter’s downdraught. Max Mosley, who was also on board the helicopter, said: ‘The wheels were rolling everywhere. A canopy was also blown over, but no people were injured.’ Ecclestone insisted that he was suitably apologetic. ‘I said at the time, “I am terribly sorry [but] I am not the pilot. You should speak to the pilot.” I said to the pilot, “Go and sort this out with him [Kelf].”’ He agreed to pay the bill to prove that he wa
s not the kind of person who believed that he could do what he liked. ‘That is not my style.’
Notes
1. Autocar, 28 May 1986.
2. The Guardian, 8 July 2002.
3. Forbes.com, 17 September 2007.
4. The Guardian, 1 October 2004.
5. Autosport, April 2006.
6. Derby Telegraph, 9 July 2008.
7. Daily Telegraph, 11 September 2008.
8. Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2009.
9. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8034172.stm
10. The Guardian, 5 May 2009.
11
THE BEGINNING OF BERNIE’S TELEVISION RIGHTS STRANGLEHOLD
The commercialisation of Formula One began the day when Jim Clark’s Lotus 49 competed in a race in the red, white and gold livery colours of a cigarette brand, Gold Leaf, with a sailor’s head logo on its sides. The date was 20 January 1968, and the event was the Lady Wigram Trophy race, the third round of the New Zealand/Australia Tasman series, at Wigram, New Zealand. The eyebrow-raising arrival of Clark’s car in the paddock was the result of months of secret negotiations with tobacco manufacturers Imperial Tobacco.
The ever-controversial boss of Team Lotus, Colin Chapman, was aware that the abandonment of the traditional British racing green would incur the singular displeasure of the bewhiskered blazer-and-flannel traditionalists within and without the FIA, who believed it an inviolable, if unspoken, rule that cars ran in their traditional national colours – red for Italy, blue for France and silver for Germany. It was a hallowed custom that Chapman was prepared to sweep aside, happy to risk the opprobrium of the sport’s rulers for the comforting compensation of a three-year contract worth £100,000, a significant contribution to annual running costs estimated in those days at about £90,000.
Track officials at Wigram at first refused to allow the Lotus on to the track, relenting only at the last minute when Chapman defiantly stood his ground. The wily team boss had successfully gambled that the more complaisant organisers of a relatively minor series on the other side of the world, unlike their counterparts in Europe, were far less likely to persist to the point of disqualifying such a crowd-pulling entrant from the race, which, incidentally, Clark went on to win. That summer, in England, Chapman tested the water further by entering the same car, this time driven by Graham Hill, in the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. On this occasion it provoked a more powerful protest, although not from the sanctioning authority, Britain’s Royal Automobile Club, but from a senior executive of ITV, a major British commercial television company. He phoned Chapman during the second practice session to warn him unless the sailor’s head logo was covered, the broadcasting of the race would be cancelled. Chapman backed down. He issued instructions for the logo to be taped over, which made little difference anyway. Given the poor quality of television coverage at that time, it could hardly be seen.
But the die had been cast. Formula One’s ruling bodies – from the FIA to the national motoring organisations – were being forced to accept that a significant groundshift was taking place, no matter how much it might be seen by some to demean a beloved gentlemanly ethos which abhorred the thought of being corrupted by commercial considerations. By the following March, in the first Grand Prix of the 1969 season, Gold Leaf Team Lotus, with the FIA’s approval, officially appeared on the grid at Kyalami, South Africa. In 1970, at the Spanish Grand Prix, another major sponsor arrived on the grid – Yardley, the perfumery division of British American Tobacco, who, in return for painting BRM’s cars in its pink livery, agreed to pay the team boss, Louis Stanley, an estimated £50,000 over two years.
For the first time commercial sponsorship started to mean more than Dunlop and Esso meeting the cost of tyres, oil and fuel, or the meagre salaries of the better-known drivers. The days when the manufacturers of spark plugs and brakes supplied their products free of charge and demanded little in return were effectively over. Drivers’ overalls, bedecked with advertisers’ patches, became such a premium advertising ‘billboard’ that the ceremony of placing a laurel wreath over a driver’s shoulders was stopped because it obscured company logos. The likes of Niki Lauda, whose arrival at Ferrari in 1974 coincided with an explosion in sponsorship budgets, was among the first to enjoy the mega-bucks. In addition to a £163,000 retainer from Ferrari, personal sponsorship deals with ten international companies increased his income by a further £379,000, a colossal sum in those days.
Sponsors’ money increasingly influenced which team a top driver would join, and, with it, came hard-nosed bargaining and conflict not seen in the days when a driver was happy to sign for a team that would provide him with little more than the best car it could produce. Even the RAC, by 1973, was willing to take the sponsors’ shilling, agreeing to change the name of the British Grand Prix, a title which it owned, to the John Player Grand Prix. The company setting the pace was the American tobacco giant Philip Morris, which, through its Marlboro brand, moved into Formula One in 1972, in a two-year deal with BRM worth in excess of £100,000, plus win bonuses and funding for marketing projects.
To extract maximum publicity, Marlboro flew 100 journalists, all expenses paid, to its European headquarters in Geneva, and then, in a chartered Air France jet, to the Circuit Paul Ricard in southern France – the previous year the company had agreed to fund a new track safety system in return for an exclusive ten-year contract on its advertising panels – for the association to be formally announced. In the centre of the track Englishman Peter Gethin, the winner of the 1971 Grand Prix at Monza, emerged in the new Marlboro-BRM car from a giant mock-up Marlboro cigarette pack. It made the front page of the motoring press throughout Europe.
There were press parties at every Grand Prix; tobacco industry fat cats who were wined and dined on gourmet food before meeting the drivers and touching the cars; tall Scandinavian girls, in skintight suits, travelled with the team to every race; full-sized replicas of the Marlboro-BRM cars were made for display in airports, hotel lobbies and town squares; drivers attired off-track in livery-colour blazers and white turtle-neck jumpers; more than a million stickers featuring the World Championship team logo and the national flag of each Grand Prix event were produced to become collectors’ items. When the team, accompanied by a convoy of trucks, passed through towns and cities, it was like a travelling circus. At one Monaco Grand Prix, Marlboro entertained 300 VIP and celebrity guests by hiring a 300-foot yacht, which became so overcrowded that it began to sway on its moorings. Marlboro was ‘buying’ the Formula One racing scene.
Although the Marlboro promotion was costing $3 million a year by 1973, Philip Morris saw it as a smart investment giving a high-dollar return. Market research was demonstrating that the brand recall of the Marlboro presence was many times that achieved with comparatively larger advertising budgets, and governments with anti-tobacco laws weren’t scrutinising too closely large popular events promoting their national heroes. There was one team boss, though, who looked down on it all with the utmost disdain – the legendary Enzo Ferrari.
Senior Marlboro management drove to Ferrari’s headquarters at Maranello, Italy, in the hope of securing his signature on a major sponsorship contract. ‘Il Commendatore’ received them warmly, provided a splendid lunch, followed by a tour of his private racetrack on land opposite the Ferrari factory, and then signalled the end of the meeting by stating that as long as he lived Ferrari would remain the Italian red and not be decorated in the colours of some ‘commercial entity’. He believed that sponsorship put the teams under too much pressure to a degree that risked drivers’ lives. Later, in 1981, seven years before he died at the age of 90, Ferrari accused constructors of putting ‘illegal’ pressure on a race starter during the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, which allegedly led to a pitlane accident and the death of a mechanic. It caused a strike by drivers, who ignored team orders to get into their cars. Commented Ferrari: ‘If cars were still painted in their national colours instead of the colours of
sponsoring companies, then constructors … would not say: “I have 60 men to employ and major sponsorship to justify.” I pay my drivers, they do what I tell them. Racing should never have been allowed to get this far.’1
But, of course, it had. Sponsorship, through the newspaper coverage it generated, was succeeding in boosting spectactor figures considerably. By 1977 a record number of 1,435,000 spectators – the average gate figure was 84,411 – were attending Formula One Grands Prix. While the printed media had begun to cover Formula One – in Britain the Daily Express was first off the mark in giving fuller coverage of Formula One to be quickly followed in 1973 by the Daily Mirror, at that time Britain’s biggest-selling daily newspaper – the UK’s two television companies, the commercial ITV and the state-subsidised BBC, remained firmly opposed to being used as a free marketing medium. The previous year the BBC took particular exception to stickers promoting condoms on the Surtees cars at the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. Outraged, the BBC insisted the stickers be removed or coverage of the race would be cancelled. Surtees, supported by the FOCA, stood firm. The BBC cancelled its coverage. In days before the mega-bucks television deals, the teams weren’t unduly concerned: the sponsors were bankrolling large chunks of the teams’ running costs; the two major television companies weren’t paying a penny.
The increase in public interest in Britain had been aroused by the clash between Malboro McLaren’s James Hunt and Ferrari’s Niki Lauda for the 1976 World Championship title. So much so that the BBC and ITV, who had refused to cover the earlier rounds due to the level of tobacco sponsorship, were forced to review their head-in-the-sand policy. Both agreed to give it some coverage, but even then the best effort was the BBC’s 20-minute clip of edited highlights. As it turned out, the race was something of an anticlimax. Lauda, who hadn’t long recovered from his near-fatal injuries at the Nurburgring, withdrew after two laps because of a monsoon-like downpour, leaving Hunt to finish fourth and collect four points – giving him 69 to Lauda’s 68 – and the World Championship title. However, the interest aroused by the race persuaded the BBC that it should reconsider its policy. In 1977 it began giving live coverage of Formula One races, and the following year the first Grand Prix programme appeared, a pilot that remained on air for 19 years. Formula One, with all its gaudy, vulgar sponsorship, had become mainstream television.