Bernie Ecclestone

Bernie Ecclestone attempted to qualify for a single World Championship event. He was in a Connaught-Alta, one of a fleet of three entered by himself. He finished qualifying 265.2 seconds off the pace, and his two team-mates failed to qualify as well.

He is, however, the most important single person in Grand Prix history. He took charge of Motor Racing Developments in 1972, from Ron Tauranac. He was the team principal for Nelson Piquet's two drivers' titles, but he'd lost interest by the time Brabham missed the deadline to enter the 1988 World Championship.

Into the governance of the sport he went, and he modernised it, and quickly controlled Formula One. He is now the leader of a billion-dollar industry. He is a divisive figure, but he's not done badly for someone who was four minutes off the pace on a Saturday in Monaco.

 

[Mephistopheles]

My nephew said to me over Christmas dinner that F1 was broken and that the whole format of it is just wrong, to be honest I had no argument to give him.

Way to go attracting the younger generation to the sport Bernie...

Edit.

Hang on I meant..

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

Bernie appears to be pushing standard chassis and engines.
http://adamcooperf1.com/2015/03/08/bernie-ecclestone-we-are-in-the-entertainment-business/

 

[Titch]

He appears to be pushing a few things, let alone chassis and engines.

A rant things that really annoy me....... that's what he's doing.

 

[cider_and_toast]

What really annoys me is that if you took Ecclestones name off of that article you would think it was written by someone who really has the best interests of the sport at heart. As soon as you associate it with Ecclestone you just know the man talks out of his arse. He's not in the entertainment busines, he's certainly not in the racing busines, he's in the cash generation business and that's what is killing the little teams.

 

[Incubus]

There's been a big sale of motor racing bok in the past month at my local Yorkshire Trading Company, with a nice selection of bargains. Anything from Enzo Ferrari's drivers, Vale Rossi and Lorenzo biographies, F1 annuals, all decently priced at £3.99.

There's also a Bernie Ecclestone biography but this one's only £1.99, and it's got his grinning face on the cover. I think that puts buyers off a bit...

 

[Fenderman]

In principle customer chassis is not that bad an idea and in the early decades it was how a lot of teams got into F1. One big problem is that nowadays power units totally influence the design of the rear half of the car. Yes, a smaller team will save a shed load of money with respect to R&D, but a Cosworth mill will not be a straightforward shoe-in for a particular chassis. Another issue is around IP and the fact that teams really do not want other teams to have direct access to their designs. It just is not in their interests to have their chassis in the hands of a third party whose first inclination would be to go over every centimetre of it with tape rules, micrometres and Vernier gauges.

As for most of the other stuff Bernie came out with, it is hard to disagree entirely but it's a bit rich coming from him!

 

[Incubus]

It has to be said that the one thing that made F1 a hell of a lot more expensive for the smaller teams was the re-introduction of turbo engines these past couple of years, with their far more expensive and complex technology.
And that's one thing that both Bernie and the FIA were against, but was pushed through by the bigger teams...

 

[cider_and_toast]

Going back to the article I read in Motorsport a couple of months back, the one thing that is screwing the little teams is that the big teams are all very rich and have more money to spend. Mercedes spend half a billion dollars because they have it and they choose to. Its the same as Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull. They have all made a lot of money and so they choose to spend it.

Part of that is down to Ecclestone. If their is one thing he has done is managed to flood the top end of the sport with cash. Lots and lots of cash.

 

[Dash Racing]

That being the case, C_A_T, one would think the simple solution would be a spending cap - no team can spend more than x this year. It seems to have curbed things in the NHL and evened things up a bit, no reason to think it couldn't do the same elsewhere. The real trick to it is to choose a price range that everyone can at least see eye to eye on, probably not easy with the egos in F1.

On the subject of the thread, I really think Bernie fell off his rocker decades ago. We're pretty much watching F1 succumb to age-related dementia.

 

[FB]

A bit off topic but the spending cap won't work as the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren etc. would just spend money through separate companies. For example, Red Bull have a technology company which would do all the R&D which the race team then bolts on to the car.

 

[Bill Boddy]

If there were to be a spending limit which could be policed it would not surprise me to see Mercedes and possibly others go. They don't want there to be any chance of a small team having a fair crack at them, it wouldn't be good publicity; that is all they are in F1 for.

 

[Mephistopheles]

If McLaren are in F1 just for good publicity then they are making a pigs ear out of it at the moment..

 

[siffert_fan]

A bit off topic but the spending cap won't work as the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren etc. would just spend money through separate companies. For example, Red Bull have a technology company which would do all the R&D which the race team then bolts on to the car.

Do you think that Fiat might be inclined to help out Ferrari? Not openly, of course.

 

[Mephistopheles]

FIAT are Ferrari, Ferrari doesn't make enough money on it own to go racing..

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

Actually Ferrari make very decent profits.

 

[canis]

The big teams themselves don't spend much more than the smaller teams at present. This is achieved throuh the fact that they don't do most of the work.

As an example, Mercedes will have a set budget, that budget covers the core team members and the rest is then allocated out to internal suppliers who are totally separate though totally owned companies. This means that supplier will have a payment from the team of (as an example) $1,000,000 but if they spend $10,000,000 it is not the team spending it.

This happens across the board from top to bottom of the grid, and will never stop. So if the FIA introduce a budget of say $50,000,000 then that is exactly what the teams will spend, their suppliers will spend 10 or 20 times that amount to make the car competitive.

 

[FB]

As I mentioned before, the teams would be very clever in circumventing a budget cap in the same way Premier League teams are getting round the financial fair play rules by having the clubs owners also as sponsors so they put the money in through the front door rather than the back.

What would be more sensible is if Mr E gave a slice of the pot to all teams competing and then prize money over and above with no separate deals for "heritage" teams". However, if you read any books about Bernie you will realise that he has a great affection for Ferrari and will do pretty much anything to keep them in the sport.

 

[FB]

Just another comment on Bernie, as the figure we all like to point at as the man who is going to kill F1, when FOM took over the broadcasting rights Bernie invested quite a sizable chunk of his own money in FOM TV with no knowledge of whether he would make it back or not. Without this investment we would not now have the wall to wall coverage of F1 we all enjoy (?) and he took a risk, with his own money.

It's very easy to castigate Mr E for the money he has made out of F1 but, seriously, where would F1 be without him? If the teams ran it it would have died years ago.

 

[Kewee]

It would be interesting to see where F1 would go if it gradually lost it's big business model and returned to motor racing in a purer sense similar to the early Stewart, Hill, Clark, Brabham, McLaren era. Would it still retain a television audience. The problem of course is television broadcasts are expensive which means the sport requires sponsorship dollars to cover that alone and suddenly we're back on the commercial merry go round and we are back to depending on big business again.
We could well be seeing the beginnings of motorsport loosing its fan base dramatically. More and more young people see the car as a way of getting from A to B without causing to much damage to the planet, many of them have virtually no interest in F1 and many of those that do still like their cars for the pleasure they bring are attracted to drifting. F1 may have its work cut out holding on to its fan base. It won't lose it in my lifetime but everything will look very different for the next generation.

 

[Incubus]

In principle customer chassis is not that bad an idea and in the early decades it was how a lot of teams got into F1.

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Such as one Frank Williams did in 1977, entering a March chassis.

Actually come to think of it so did Ferrari in 1932 with privately entered Alfas!