No place for Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone as the sport enters a new era

24 January 2017 11:38

Bernie Ecclestone has fought his final Formula One boardroom battle.

The diminutive Briton transformed the art of grand prix racing into a multi-billion pound global industry and subsequently governed it with an iron fist.

But Liberty Media, the American giant which has completed its £6.4billion purchase of the sport, plans on taking F1 into a bold, new and exciting era. Ecclestone, 87 in October, will not be a part of that journey.

Instead he will watch the new season as a mere spectator. His unprecedented four-decade reign, one which the sporting world is unlikely to ever see again, is over.

He has been handed the role of chairman emeritus, and will be available as a source to the new board, but he will no longer be involved in the day-to-day running of Formula One for the first time since the 1970s.

And for Ecclestone, a former used car salesman who was born in Ipswich in 1930, the writing had been on the wall.

When news first broke that private equity firm CVC Capital Partners - which employed Ecclestone as its spokesperson - wished to sell up, Ecclestone was not informed.

He feared his career was over, but remained as chief executive officer after Liberty Media purchased an initial 18.7 per cent stake in the sport last September. At the time, Ecclestone said Liberty wanted him to stay for three years, but in reality he lasted just four months.

By the time of the next race, Chase Carey, the heavily-moustached American, was already installed as the sport's new chairman. And at Carey's debut grand prix, Ecclestone was quite literally pushed to one side.

As journalists, television crew and photographers mobbed Carey under the floodlights of the Singapore paddock, Ecclestone was bundled over in the melee. He let out a yelp and fell to the floor before being helped to his feet. It was the beginning of the end.

Ecclestone courted criticism at most turns. He once called for women to be "dressed in white like all other domestic appliances." He claimed female racing drivers "would not be taken seriously." He said Russian president Vladimir Putin should govern Europe. "He gets the job done," Ecclestone said last year - a quote he also used when talking about Adolf Hitler in 2009. He is a fan of President Trump, too.

Ecclestone has also taken Formula One to countries with dubious human rights records; Bahrain, Russia and, most recently, Azerbaijan. He also fended off criminal prosecution for blackmail in 2014. The court case ended by Ecclestone paying £60million to stop the trial.

Ecclestone was partial to a spot of guile, too. Last season he invited a number of journalists into his motorhome in Bahrain to discuss the sport's new disastrous qualifying format.

The system was universally panned by those present, but in a subsequent meeting with the sport's top brasses, Ecclestone, according to one leading team principal at least, claimed the media had been in full support of the new format.

While Ecclestone has reigned over Formula One for 40 years, he has actually been involved in the sport since the 1950s. He was a driver first, in the junior categories of motor racing, before becoming a driver manager and then a team owner.

Ecclestone then took an interest in the commercial side of the sport. He encouraged broadcasters to buy into a package, as opposed to a race-by-race strategy, and from there the sport gained greater, consistent exposure around the world.

He turned a sport which hosted a dozen races scattered across its traditional European heartland into one that now visits every corner of the globe, and, despite a decline in television audiences in recent years, one which attracts tens of millions of viewers every other week.

Ecclestone raised a glass of champagne with a select group of British media in Abu Dhabi to bid farewell to a retiring newspaper journalist. Little did he know that he would be toasting his final race as F1's supremo.

Source: PA