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.

 

[cider_and_toast]

FB, I would suggest that, like most good dictators, when they're on their way up, no one really minds who gets a little squished in the climb but once they settle themselves at the top and realise they don't need anyone else now they are king of the hill, that's when people start getting screwed over but it's too late to do anything about it.

Ecclestone 1977 to 1987 was the shot in the arm the sport needed to drag itself into the same sort of team / governing body relationship that other sports had enjoyed for some time. Once however, he killed the Brabham team because he couldn't be arsed anymore, and just looked at making cash, that's when things turned sour. Finally, once Max granted Ecclestone the rights for a hundred years and then he promptly sold said rights down the long and winding path to CVC, the sport was seriously screwed.

By then of course, as at least Ken Tyrell realised, F1 as everyone knew it was dead and buried.

So yes, Ecclestone did do some good for the sport all though I would argue that he knew what he was doing with the TV rights, that man is too shrewd with money to do anything else, but he's been in charge far too long and is hurting the sport now.

 

[Dash Racing]

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.

I must admit, on the whole, drifting is more exciting to watch than F1. The car control skills shown in top level drift competitions put even Keke Rosberg's considerable skills to shame.

The big benefit drifting has over Formula 1 is that at the lower levels of drifting it's much easier (and cheaper) to organize events. Any small oval track or closed parking lot is more than sufficient. Further, it's easier to get into it as a driver, since just about any high-powered rear wheel drive or all wheel drive vehicle can do it. Your outlay for a basic entry-level drift car is probably only $15,000 - $20,000, and your total outlay for a "season" is likely going to be less than $50,000, including tires, travel cost, and repairs for when you mess up. For the most part, outside of Japan, you'll be competing with people at your skill and spending level, which makes things a lot fairer.

Contrast this with open wheel racing, a season in USF2000 (the second step of the Road to Indy ladder, the first car, not kart, level) is going to set you back about $200,000, and that doesn't guarantee you'll be competitive - there are big teams spending a lot more than $200,000 a year that will dominate you completely and utterly.

There's more grass-roots support for drifting because it's the "poor man's" option - you don't have to be rich, you don't have to know anyone already in the industry, you just need a car, and some skill.

The support for drifting was also boosted by the popularity of the Fast and the Furious, and a manga/anime titled Initial D. While open wheel racing has some good movies about it, they never became the blockbusters that the Fast and the Furious was.

Formula 1 needs some good PR and to get with the times if it hopes to survive. It needs more every-man teams too - the hipster generation hate anything that represents the 1%, possibly rightfully so. None of that is going to happen under Bernie Ecclestone.

Hopefully, Formula E's attempt to be relevant to younger generations can attract new fans to open wheel racing, and keep it alive long enough for other racing formulas to sort out their problems.

 

[Mephistopheles]

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.

If it hadn't have been him then it would have been someone else I don't buy into this he was the saviour of F1 lark...

 

[Kewee]

Ecclestone may not be the saviour of F1 but he certainly turned it into the global phenomena it is today. Without him F1 would have continued but undoubtably on a much smaller scale. Some may have preferred that, but it would never have been available to be viewed globally.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Why's that then?

 

[Kewee]

cider_and_toast .....To cover global television costs requires enormous amounts of money which can only be achieved with the big business model and massive sponsorship, something that Bernie has managed very well, obviously in his own interests, but the sport and most of those involved have also flourished under his watch. Even as recently as the 80's and even 90's F1 was not available live to a global audience. If you look at the cars of the Stewart, Lauda, Hunt era and even more recently, they're not mobile billboards, maybe just a couple of sponsors related to the automotive industry. F1 has only survived as we know it by creating obscene amounts of money and Ecclestone has played a major role in its success by collectively, along with the teams, drawing in massive sponsorship.

 

[Mephistopheles]

but it would never have been available to be viewed globally.

It ain't free to view though is it? and F1 did perfectly well before His Greediness came along and the fact that it ain't free to view is why teams are struggling to attract sponsors and so struggle to even stay in the sport under his regime.

Just how many teams have gone tits up under Bernie the Great.?

 

[siffert_fan]

The reason my wife and I became life-long auto-racing fans was because we began attending races with our families, including F1 races, at a very early age (not even in our teens). Television viewing is a far cry from the total experience of being there.

Because of Bernie's extortionist sanctioning fees, the various circuits have to charge so much for admission that there is no way that the average family can afford to attend. In that way alone, Bernie is responsible for guaranteeing a shrinking fan base for the future.

 

[cider_and_toast]

F1 has only survived as we know it by creating obscene amounts of money

Or could you say, F1 has only become the way we know it thanks to obscene amounts of money?

Ecclestone has made a lot of people very rich. Every team cuts it's cloth according to what it has (or what it thinks it can get away with). Team Lotus won 50 GPs, 4 drivers and constructors championships and the Indy 500 for a fraction of the budget of a modern F1 team (in fact I would argue they won all that for what it takes to run a front line F1 team in a single year). If you were to go back in time and ask Chapman if he would have liked that much money though, he would have said off course.

Massive amounts of cash hasn't made the sport better it's just made it different.

 

[siffert_fan]

And it is readily arguable that it was the massive budget that Porsche (and I am an admitted fan of all things Porsche) brought to the late and much-lamented Can-Am series that killed it off. When your budget ($2 Million according to rumour) is 4 TIMES that of the previously dominant team (McLaren has gone on record as having never had more than a $500k budget vs the Porsche $2m), nobody, other than a corporate entity, can possibly hope to compete.

That is where Bernie has now positioned F1.

 

[cider_and_toast]

The thing is, Ecclestone has created his very own "ponzi scheme". He has to keep the cash coming in otherwise it won't work.

He'll move on eventually and the buzzards will fight over the corpse but CVC have to make their margin to keep the investors sweet.

 

[siffert_fan]

What really annoys me is that our daughter is finally beginning to show an interest in cars and autoracing and we hope to encourage that. To nurture that interest, my wife and I have been concentrating more on taking our daughter to forms other than F1, and that is even without cost being an issue.

This year we are taking her to Le Mans, the Indy 500, at least one Formula E event, and V8Supercar races. I suspect that F1 this year will be at least as boring as last year (and one-team domination is always boring no matter how much a fan you are of one particular driver), so we are concentrating on other forms. That alone doesn't bode well for the future of F1, and that is true even WITHOUT factoring in the cost of attendance.

 

[cider_and_toast]

And yet we devote endless hours on here talking about it and most of us will tune in this weekend to watch it. Once it's in the blood and all that.

 

[siffert_fan]

C_A_T

Quite true, but WE are already addicted. The trick is getting future generations as hooked as we are! And that is true for all forms of motorsports, not just F1!

 

[cider_and_toast]

Very true. Apparently though, the sport doesn't need young fans. That's what Mr Ecclestone says anyway.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Me and a few friends went to a MotoGP event the tickets were about 35 quid per person and half that for a child however my mate had forgotten to buy a ticket for his daughter and son (so he said.) so he asked me and my girlfriend if we could pretend his daughter was ours and he would go in with his son.

No problem whatsoever we walked up to the gate gave our tickets to the fella on the gate he looked down at the child smiled and waved us through.

The whole thing was so relaxed it was a great day out and a great memory to have.

I'll bet my left nut you wouldn't get away with that at an F1 event.

Sometimes it is the little things that makes a day perfect..

 

[siffert_fan]

Exactly!

And thanks to Bernie, such things aren't possible where F1 is concerned!

 

[Kewee]

Just in case anyone thinks I'm defending Ecclestone, I'M NOT!!!!!!!!! I don't even like the man or his values or lack of. I agree with most of the criticisms I'm reading here but in saying that if it weren't for him I wouldn't be looking forward to watching another F1 season. My favourite era was the Stewart period followed by Lauda/Hunt and guess what, I never saw a Formula One car moving live on television, maybe a 30sec clip two or three days later on the news. If we were very lucky the local television network might have shown a highlights package on the weekend sports program maybe 10 or 20mins long. The only news I could gather was newspaper reports 24 hours after the race. Your all very lucky, you can pay the admission and go to the GP's. I did the same when I lived in London in 1981, went to Silverstone and Hockenheim before they bastardised it. Loved Brands Hatch and went to Assen for the bikes. My only regret was not going to Monaco, it was just too far beyond my budget at the time. Hopefully I'll make it to Singapore one day but in the meantime I have to thank Bernie for giving me the opportunity to watch an entire GP weekend live as it happens, practice one, two and three, qualifying and then the GP complete with a 90 minute build up show including pit lane interviews.

 

[Incubus]

It's not all black and white. I totally agree with Mephistopheles that Bernie being F1's saviour is an absolute load of cobblers. At the same time I think it's wrong to blame him for everything wrong in F1 because some of the big teams have a lot to answer for, particularly when it comes to colluding in measures that price out smaller and newer teams.

When it comes to extrortionate attendance prices though it's hard to blame anyone other than Bernie. When the spanish GP for instance was held in Jerez attendances were the lowest of the year, with a measly 15,000 spectators attending. People at the time blamed the lack of local interest in motorsport but charging F1 prices in what was then one of the poorest areas in Europe can't have helped. Especially as the Moto GP (or 500cc as it was called at the time) had no problem attracting 200,000 spectators flocking to Jerez...

it just didn't make F1 look good at all by comparison.

 

[Kewee]

Attendances you quote at Jerez were prior to the Alonso era. The Spanish have always been Moto GP and bike enthusiasts, they still are but attendances at F1 GP's changed dramatically with Alonso's success.