Formula One and Beyond

by Max Mosley

  In parallel with my work for March, I had also been heavily involved with the Formula One teams’ association. Starting in 1969, I attended the meetings on behalf of March and played an increasingly prominent role in the association’s affairs. Then, at the end of 1971, Bernie Ecclestone bought the Brabham team and appeared at his first meeting. I had known him slightly before then as he had been around Formula One since the 1950s, but we’d never had any meaningful contact. During that first meeting it quickly became clear that here was someone who understood business as well as motor racing, a very different character from the other team principals who made up what was then called the Formula One Constructors’ and Entrants’ Association. They were all enthusiasts and ex-racers, good at motor racing but not really connected to the world outside.

  Those like Colin Chapman who had serious outside businesses tended to send their team managers to the meetings rather than come themselves. Bernie, too, had a number of business interests beyond Brabham but plainly intended to be hands-on. Pretty soon we formed an alliance and, before long, he and I were negotiating on behalf of all the teams.

  Back then I was a very straightforward barrister while Bernie was renowned as the country’s top used car dealer. Because of his reputation, other dealers would come from all over the UK to try to get the better of him. Some of them ended up phoning him from a motorway service area on their way home to clarify exactly what deal they had done. It was said that he could value an entire showroom of cars at a glance. At dealers’ meetings where batches of cars were swapped, he was reputed to introduce two or three fictitious cars into negotiations and, at the end of an evening of swapping, end up with his fictitious cars back plus two or three real ones. This was said to have stopped when, to liven things up (a Bernie trait – he was easily bored without a challenge), he introduced an imaginary articulated lorry into the swaps one day and had to pay a lot to purchase it later from a Manchester dealer who had realised what was going on.

  I really liked the idea of working with someone whose brain was that fast. Working with him was also fun, because the jokes came thick and fast. One was a competition between us to see who could be first to get a particular team principal to do or say something we had agreed on beforehand. Another typical Bernie joke was sprung when I had arranged to join him for coffee in the workingmen’s cafe where he met his cronies every Saturday morning. After I ordered my coffee, the waitress appeared with a huge English breakfast, put it in front of me and took no notice when I said I just wanted a coffee. It turned out he’d told her his friend had just been released from prison that morning and would be very hungry, but too proud to accept food he couldn’t pay for. She was to put a big breakfast in front of him as soon as he sat down, and not take no for an answer.

  But Bernie’s speed of thought was also a weakness. He was so good at tactics and opportunism that he had no need to worry about strategy. Each situation was turned to his advantage. His old solicitor from his car-dealing days once said to me he had ‘a great talent for getting himself out of trouble – that he got himself into in the first place’. This did not always work, especially in the plodding and meticulous world of lawyers and High Court judges. His relative inability to think strategically led (at least in my view) to him making errors when Formula One finances entered the big league and he had to deal with the City. But as a master tactician he has been immensely and deservedly successful.

  In the early days, one of Bernie’s sayings was that the only place he wanted respect was in his bank manager’s office. I found this attitude very appealing, contrasting markedly with the vanity and needless self-promotion of many in Formula One. Some might say that principle slipped somewhat in his later years, but even now you seldom see him profiling despite all the opportunities a Formula One race provides. For instance, he has never been on the podium with the drivers.

  At that stage of FOCA’s development a division of labour between Bernie and me was beginning to emerge: he was interested in the business while I was fascinated by the politics. We spent a long time on the phone almost every evening. He wanted to make the teams, but above all himself, prosperous while my goal was to stop what I saw as elderly and incompetent people interfering in ‘our’ sport.

  As the governing body, the FIA united all the motoring clubs that organised the races (see appendix) and had complete control over every aspect of Formula One, including the rules. The competing teams had no say other than through two national clubs, the UK’s RAC and Italy’s ACI. But these were just two of the 15 members of the Commission Sportive Internationale, or CSI, the FIA’s sporting committee. The commercial interests of the race organisers, who wanted to minimise their costs, were in direct conflict with those of the teams, who wanted to be paid as much as possible to participate. Eight of the 15 CSI member countries were race organisers but had no team, while Italy and the UK were potentially conflicted, being race organisers as well as representing their country’s teams. In addition to the CSI rules, each organiser decided his own race and practice schedules and the date of his event; all he needed was CSI approval. The teams’ position was, to say the least, weak.

  This would have been bad enough if the CSI members had been experienced motor racing professionals, but they were mainly former wealthy gentlemen drivers plus a few club officials. The FIA president was Prince Paul Alfons von Metternich-Winneburg, a former racer, soldier and great-grandson of Klemens von Metternich, the Habsburg Empire politician who established the Congress of Vienna in 1815. His successor, Jean-Marie Balestre (see below), was always proud of the fact that, with one brief exception, he was the first FIA president without a grand European title.

  This was what Bernie and I were up against when we started in 1972. One of our first deals centred on a non-championship race in Brazil and was made with the agreement of the Brazilian club. The teams all wanted to go but TV Rede Globo, who were promoting and paying for the race, couldn’t send the money in advance because of exchange control regulations. Without the certainty of payment the teams were unwilling to travel, but it was agreed that I should fly to São Paulo, collect the money in cash and call Bernie once it was in the hotel safe. Only then would the teams load the cars.

  When I arrived, it was obvious Rede Globo was a huge company and entirely serious, but its CEO explained it was going to be absurdly expensive for them to buy that many dollars on the black market and give me the whole sum in cash. Once the race was run, they said, the central bank would permit them to export the agreed fee, so I decided to take the risk and gave the green light. The teams arrived and raced, the money was all paid, and a Brazilian World Championship race followed a year later. It has been a fixture ever since. During the 1970s it was always difficult to get permission to export the money. To make things easier for the promoter, we would be given a certain amount of cash in local currency on arrival and hand enough to the teams to pay their hotel bills and expenses, which would then be deducted from their prize money.

  In Rio, I collected the money from a nondescript office that looked like a travel agency where, once identified, I was led to a back room with security cameras everywhere. Then a man would enter with a large quantity of cash and count it out on the table. On my first visit I simply packed it into in my briefcase and made to go. Everyone was horrified. Where were my armed guards? No one knew what was in the case, I thought, and walking down the street with armed heavies seemed to advertise that you had something valuable. I didn’t fancy a gunfight with me in the middle. But they also pointed out that the Grand Prix was at Interlagos and I had to take the plane down to São Paulo – what if the airport security look in your briefcase? Fortunately they didn’t.

  Soon after the Brazil race, Argentina decided it, too, wanted a Grand Prix. There was a great tradition of Argentinian drivers including Juan Manuel Fangio and Carlos Reutemann, who had begun to make a real impression. Bernie and I met some generals from the Argentinian military junta near Heathrow. The atmosphere was stiff, since they
were clearly more used to giving orders than negotiating. They had brought a rather bulky old-fashioned tape recorder to record the proceedings, but when they weren’t looking Bernie interfered with it and the tape started to spool on to the floor. Nevertheless, we did a deal.

  Marco Piccinini, Enzo Ferrari’s choice to succeed Luca di Montezemolo as team manager, appeared for the first time at an early Argentinian race. We decided the newcomer was a natural target for a joke. Bernie sent a journalist to the Ferrari pit to ask Marco why Ferrari had not objected to the race being shortened, explaining that, with their Alfa Romeo 12-cylinder engines, Bernie’s Brabhams could not hold enough fuel to complete the distance so he had managed to persuade the officials to truncate it. All the other teams were peering through small gaps in the garage doors as Marco stomped off to the control tower to confront the officials, knowing it was completely forbidden to make a change of that kind without the agreement of all the competitors.

  Sure enough, there was a call over the PA summoning ‘Mr Ecclestone’ to the tower. Once there, Bernie listened to the arguments then asked Marco in front of the officials why Ferrari wanted the race shortened. The officials were, of course, completely bemused – no one had said anything to them about shortening the race and Marco was the one complaining about it being shortened, not demanding that it happen. You can imagine how much worse the language barrier must have made the resulting confusion.

  I bumped into Marco in the car park a short time later, as I was about to leave for the hotel. Although in his early twenties he was already a serious and intelligent man, and couldn’t understand the trick or our motives for playing it. I tried to explain how in England on a building site, they would send the new employee to fetch some rubber nails, tartan paint and such like, but I didn’t get the impression he thought it at all funny.

  In 1971 there had been a problem at the Monaco Grand Prix when only 18 starters were allowed from the 23 cars present, among them Mario Andretti, now driving for Ferrari. He had mechanical problems in the only dry practice session. As a result, he didn’t qualify for the grid and could not start despite having won the South African Grand Prix two months earlier and lying second in the World Championship.

  There was no real reason for 18 starters. The number was derived from a complicated FIA formula dreamt up by one of the old boys running the sport. It included the length of the circuit and the maximum speed reached by the cars but, when questioned, they could provide no rational basis for their formula. The teams agreed to ask for a sensible number of starters at Monaco and elsewhere for the 1972 season.

  After the arguments in 1971, the Monaco club had a new, much younger president, Michel Boeri. Bernie and I had met him in Madrid at the previous race and we thought the problem was fixed. We had agreed there would be 25 starters at Monaco but when I arrived in Monte Carlo in the early hours of the first day of practice, I found a note waiting for me from Andrew Ferguson, the secretary of the teams’ association, saying the organisers had decreed there would not be 25 starters after all.

  That year, the teams were all sharing an underground garage more or less where the Grimaldi Forum is now. Bernie and I called a meeting and it was agreed that no one would practise until the organisers confirmed that 25 cars would start the race. Shortly after the start of the scheduled session, the French Matra was at the top of the ramp ready to go out. Then it was wheeled back into the garage, which sent a very clear message: if even the French, who were practically on home territory, were with us, it was serious.

  The spectators were looking at an empty circuit, wondering what was going on. Suddenly, a number of police appeared, taking up positions at the garage exits, implying that if we didn’t run, they would impound the cars and sue us for damages in the Monaco courts. To test the situation (but also for his amusement) Bernie got in one of his Brabhams and had his mechanics push it to the entrance where a policeman was blocking the way. The car went over the policeman’s foot. Much whistle blowing and shouting resulted, but it became obvious this was a genuine threat. Given the sort of people running the teams in those days (and it would probably be the same today), this simply made us more determined than ever.

  Shortly after the appearance of the police, a deputation from the organisers turned up, headed by Boeri. Having (as they thought) put on the squeeze, they were ready to negotiate. In fact, they were under more pressure than we were because the public were getting restive, whistling and catcalling round the empty circuit. I was deputed to walk up the ramp and talk to them because I spoke French. We had a deal, I said. Twenty-five cars would start the race – and we wouldn’t go out to practise until our agreement was confirmed in writing.

  They explained the impasse was not the Automobile Club de Monaco’s fault but the FIA’s insistence that we adhere to their formula restricting the number of cars; they were confident they could persuade the FIA to concede once its representative turned up, but we must start practice immediately to appease the public.

  In those early days they probably thought we were naive. Of course we knew that once the teams had practised and one had an advantage, our unity would break down. I said no: first sign the agreement, then we practise. But, they told me, only the FIA representative could sign and he was nowhere to be found. ‘Well, you’d better find him,’ I replied, knowing we had to be completely intransigent. ‘We are not going to practise until he has signed.’ A short time later an old boy with white hair appeared and signed the document we had prepared on the roof of a car parked nearby. We had won and practice began.

  Another problem back then was passes, which were issued at the organiser’s discretion. We never knew how many we were going to receive and some races insisted on a paradoxical system where passes were available only from the circuit office – which could not be reached without a pass. At a FOCA meeting before the 1974 Monza race, Bernie and I suggested we issue our own passes. Peter Warr, the Team Lotus manager, explained patiently that we would be refused entry with homemade passes. But if we all have our own passes and refuse to use theirs, we said, they will realise pretty soon that they will have to let us in if they want a motor race.

  On our charter flight to Milan for the Italian Grand Prix, everyone was given one of our new passes, a simple piece of yellow cardboard with ‘Monza’ and ‘Box’ printed on it because we thought ‘Box’ was the Italian for ‘pits’. When we got to the circuit the next day, the Monza gatekeepers, ever pragmatic motor sport aficionados, let us in without difficulty. They had been surprised when the first mechanics arrived early with our passes, but quickly got the message. This was an important victory in the battle to control Formula One and led us to make our own permanent FOCA passes valid for the entire season. The only place we had trouble when the new system really got going the following year was Circuit Paul Ricard for the French Grand Prix, where I remember driving into the paddock with a number of gatekeepers hanging on the car like ripe fruit.

  In 1975 Bernie and I went to Brussels to negotiate the teams’ European prize fund. This was our first encounter with Jean-Marie Balestre, then head of the French Federation, later to become president of the FIA’s CSI, motor sport division, and eventually president of the FIA itself. His background was in newspapers; he had worked closely with Robert Hersant, the French newspaper magnate and politician. Both had controversial careers during the Second World War: Hersant was later penalised for collaboration and photographs even exist of Balestre in SS uniform. His enemies used to produce them at every opportunity. On the Continent, membership of the SS was more or less OK for a German, but definitely not considered appropriate for a Frenchman.

  However, Balestre said he was at all times working undercover for the French Resistance. Although he spent some time in prison after the war, he eventually received the Légion d’honneur for his services to France, as well as a Resistance pension. Late one night over a second bottle of wine, he told me how difficult it had been at the beginning of the war. He had been only 18 when the war star
ted. More recently, reading Philip Short’s biography of François Mitterrand, I began to understand how nuanced and ambiguous things were in France at that time and feel more sympathetic towards Balestre than we did back in the 1980s.

  At that first meeting we had no idea that he was soon to play such a major role in our lives. He already had a reputation for being tough and was sitting at the table with other FIA notables, including Metternich. Apart from the odd local rally or hill climb, Balestre had never competed but had been a successful journalist and editor of the French magazine L’Auto-Journal before engaging in motor sport politics at national level. It was obvious he was out to make an impression, and I think he wanted to sort us out to show his fellow FIA bosses how tough he was. It was certainly true that by then we were already seen in FIA circles as far too big for our boots.

  Bernie loved occasions like this. He got up from the table as Balestre began to speak and started to walk around the room adjusting the pictures. Balestre was trying to explain on behalf of the race promoters that there was no more money, they could not afford the prize fund we wanted, but Bernie appeared to be wholly preoccupied with the art and not listening. Balestre became so tense he snapped the pencil he was holding and then we cranked up the pressure by employing our dependable tactic: we said we had to leave to catch our plane (in fact, we were booked on a much later flight).

  Faced with the talks breaking down and having to explain to the other organisers that there was no agreement, which would mean that none of them could prepare a budget, they pleaded with us to stay longer. I finally relented and agreed to see if we could catch a later flight, and came back in to say I had succeeded but the airline couldn’t hold the seats for long. On our way out, Bernie slipped in an extra $5000 per race for our prize fund, but by then they were too tired and bemused to resist.

  The next skirmish arose during the 1975 German Grand Prix when we had a difficult negotiation with the organisers of the Canadian Grand Prix, who refused to meet our asking price. Eventually, we set a deadline of midnight and Bernie told them if they hadn’t agreed by then, we would not race in Canada that year. The race was less than two months away and transport arrangements were already pressing. They ignored him, so the following morning we announced the cancellation of the Canadian race. Immediately the organisers contacted us to say they would pay after all.