| By Nigel Roebuck | |
| Special Contributor |
In recent days, following the announcement of Bernie Ecclestone's removal from the helm of Formula 1, it has been irritating to see suggestions that until he came along, it was little more than a ragbag of bumbling amateurs. Perhaps these people never met Enzo Ferrari or Colin Chapman, nor remembered days when, at a place like Hockenheim, there was not a seat to be had. Chronologically my own life in F1 has more or less dovetailed with Ecclestone's, for 1971, when I started work as a journalist, was also the year that he moved in from the fringes of 'the sport', and began to transform it into 'the business'. Indisputably, without him F1 would never have grown into an entity of interest to such as CVC Capital Partners or Liberty Media. Following the death at Monza in 1970 of Jochen Rindt, whom he managed, Bernie took stock of the F1 scene, and resolved to become, let's say, more directly involved. A born dealer and already a wealthy man, in 1972 he acquired - on what may be called advantageous terms - the Brabham team, and he was on his way. That year - over sandwiches and beer in a pub - I interviewed him for the first time, and even by the standards of the day it was apparent that his love of racing was 'old school' in its roots. He was, for example, infuriated that Spa - the old Spa - had been ruled out of the world championship by the drivers: "If you put barbed wire down both sides of the Masta Straight, and told them it was a million to win, they'd all be there like a shot..."
Already you could see how Ecclestone's mind worked, and a homily from that day has stayed with me: "First you get on, then you get rich, then you get honest..." While you could never describe such as Ferrari and McLaren and Tyrrell and BRM and Matra as a 'ragbag of amateurs', undeniably their focus was on racing, rather than the commercial aspects of F1. Traditionally team owners had done individual deals with race promoters, and if you had a superstar driver you got more 'starting money' than for a journeyman. Nothing wrong with that as a principle, but no matter who was in the car you were paid a relative pittance, and it was to this problem that Ecclestone swiftly applied himself. What he proposed was that he do a collective deal with the promoters for everyone, and his fellow team owners, aware of Bernie's reputation as a 'robust businessman', willingly went along. He therefore effectively 'unionised' F1, setting up F1CA (later FOCA), and if circuit owners squealed, inescapably the power lay no longer with them: if they agreed to Bernie's fiscal requirements, all the teams turned up to race; if not, they had an empty paddock. The policy worked most satisfactorily. 'A dog will not howl if you beat him with a bone', goes the old saying, and Ecclestone well knew that if you took care of people's wallets, their hearts and minds would surely follow. Over time the team owners became rich beyond their dreams, and against that backdrop were only too happy to let Bernie do his thing: no surprise that his power base in F1 grew to a point that it became absolute. Not everyone was happy about this, most notably Jean-Marie Balestre, who in 1978 became president of FISA, then the sporting arm of the FIA. Very much an autocrat himself, the choleric Balestre concluded that Ecclestone's power needed trimming, and increasingly engaged in a battle with him over the finances and control of the world championship, which built up to what became known as the FISA-FOCA War.
Through the winter of 1980-81 F1 was split asunder, with the 'manufacturer' teams - Ferrari, Renault, Alfa Romeo - feeling obligated to side with the governing body, all the others remaining true to Ecclestone and FOCA. In the end it was resolved, as these things always are, and although Balestre proclaimed he had won, it was Ecclestone who emerged with precisely the deal he wanted: if FISA retained the right to make the sporting and technical regulations, that was fine with him; what mattered was that Balestre signed the first Concorde Agreement, under which FOCA was officially granted the commercial rights to F1. Max Mosley, then in the poacher role of legal adviser to Ecclestone and FOCA, ultimately became gamekeeper, of course, succeeding Balestre as president of the FIA in 1993. Now Bernie truly did have his ducks in a row. By this time F1 was established as a global sport, and if the focus remained in its cultural heartland, there were also grands prix in North and South America, Japan and Australia, Ecclestone repeatedly saying that 'Europe was finished', that his intention was to concentrate on new markets, particularly in Asia. More than anything else, F1 had mushroomed because of TV. When Bernie began to take control, relatively few races were televised at all, and fewer than that in their entirety. Gradually, though, he did ever more lucrative deals with TV companies in ever more countries, requiring them to broadcast every grand prix, and it was this development that brought riches on a level beyond anything seen before. At the end of each season, the spoils - less Mr E's very considerable percentage - would be divided up between the teams, based on their results.
In 1994, for no reason that was good, F1 came to the notice of the wider world. At Imola Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying, and 24 hours later Ayrton Senna - overwhelmingly the most celebrated racing driver on Earth - suffered the same fate. It had been 12 years since the last fatality at a grand prix, and in that time the world had immeasurably changed. When Gilles Villeneuve and Riccardo Paletti lost their lives, in 1982, the public reaction was much as it had always been: while sad, it was no more than occasionally inevitable in a sport that could never be safe. A dozen years on, though, the risk-averse culture was in full flow, and newspapers everywhere took a high moral tone, while taking care to cash in on the tragedies. I remember the front page of Monday's Daily Star: 'In the name of sport', the rag trumpeted, sandwiching its headline between photographs of Ratzenberger and Senna, slumped in their cockpits. And, at the bottom of the page, 'These young men died giving us thrills'. In truth it had ever been thus, and Niki Lauda pointed out that more remarkable was the absence of fatalities for so long. "For 12 years," he said, "God had his hand over Formula 1. This weekend he took it away." In Monaco, two weeks later, Karl Wendlinger was severely injured in practice, and suddenly it seemed as though it were impossible to come out of an accident unscathed. The following morning FIA president Mosley convened an emergency press conference. This was not, Max said, a moment for the niceties of unanimous approval, as defined by the Concorde Agreement: "Because of the gravity of the situation, and the force of public opinion, the time has come to push aside such considerations, and simply do what is right, in the general interests of the sport." Mosley then announced major rule changes, dealing primarily with three areas: the reduction of downforce and horsepower, as well as safety modifications to the cars. Many were introduced immediately, and all eventually came to be. If some were rather kneejerk in nature, collectively they changed the map of F1 forever, inevitably at some cost to the purist. As Professor Sid Watkins put it, "Society had changed, and the old panache of F1 was close to being no longer acceptable."
Human nature being what it is, tragedy had no adverse effect on the popularity of motor racing. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I remember from a conversation with Ecclestone on the subject a year or so later. "After Senna was killed, everyone said, 'That's it, Formula 1's finished. Brazil,' they said, 'don't even have a race in Brazil...' And what happened? This year we had the biggest crowd ever in Brazil. The TV ratings have been bigger than ever, and at every circuit the crowd has been up..." Perhaps, I suggested, what Imola did was remind people that this is a serious business. "Absolutely," Bernie said. "You and I have been around long enough to remember that, regrettably, we used to lose drivers. Obviously we weren't happy when it happened, but it was something that was accepted. "I remember, at the end of '68, we had the choice for Jochen of the Goodyear deal with Brabham, or the Firestone deal with Lotus. And I said to him, 'If you want to win the world championship, you've got more chance with Lotus than with Brabham. If you want to stay alive, you've got more chance with Brabham than with Lotus'. "It wasn't a bad thing to say; it was a matter of fact - and I'm not saying it now because he got killed in a Lotus. That was what the pattern was: people did get killed in Lotuses. Maybe Colin took things to the edge a bit - and Jochen was prepared to accept that. "That was how racing was, but now suddenly we've got a new breed of journalist, spectator, TV watcher, who've never seen anyone killed in a Formula 1 car." Ecclestone has been truly close to only a handful of drivers, of whom Rindt was indisputably one. Much earlier, though, he was close to Stuart Lewis-Evans, who died from burns after an accident at Casablanca in 1958.
Half a century later, in Valencia, I asked Bernie for his memories of his friend, and saw the other side of the man: I never thought to see a tear in his eyes. "He was just a super guy. We both lived in Bexleyheath and Stuart and I travelled together. People have no idea what it was like in those days. I was with him when they put him in the ambulance, and in the hospital - where they wrapped him in a blanket, and sat him in a chair, waiting for bloody hours for someone to come and take a look at him. "We needed to get him back to England as soon as possible, and the quickest way was on the Vandervell charter. Stuart was on a stretcher, which was strapped across three seats, and the only medical help he had was one nurse. He was conscious all the way back, and although he was in terrible pain he talked about the future, even asked for a cup of tea. "They took him to the McIndoe Burns Unit at East Grinstead, but it was too late - the initial lack of treatment had been crucial, and he died a few days later. I walked away from racing for a long time after that." As many have observed, almost uniquely in F1, Ecclestone, for all he has achieved, is curiously devoid of ego. "When people ask me if I'm proud of what I've done, I say, 'Satisfied perhaps, but proud, no.' One good thing I did, though, was get Sid [Watkins] involved." It was in 1978 that Bernie persuaded 'The Prof' to take charge of all medical aspects of F1, and over the next 30 years the lamented Sid, way more than any other individual, transformed attitudes and practices in this sphere of the sport. It is thanks to him that countless drivers are alive today.
Down the years Ecclestone dealt deftly with any attempt to compromise his position as F1's power broker, putting to good use his time-honoured practice of 'divide and rule', not least in dealing with FOTA (Formula One Teams Association), which was announced in early 2009. For once, the team owners had set aside their differences, and clearly their alliance was not going to sit well with Bernie. At its launch Martin Whitmarsh spoke of the importance of the championship calendar, from which America was then absent: "We should go there strategically, rather than leave it in the hands of the promoter, and consider only who's going to give us the most money to turn up..." Heresy. And there was more from Luca di Montezemolo: "What's certain is that the time for 'divide and conquer' to rule in F1 is over." Ecclestone went to work with his chequebook. "At the time FOTA was set up," said Whitmarsh, "Luca di Montezemolo [Ferrari], Dietrich Mateschitz [Red Bull], Mansour Ojjeh [McLaren] and Dieter Zetsche [Mercedes] had a meeting in Stuttgart, and they all agreed that they would not individually jump." The togetherness didn't last. From Bernie, Red Bull received a sweetener of $60million, after which Ferrari, normally the first to break ranks on these occasions, found an offer - this time $100m - equally irresistible. All they had to do was leave FOTA. "Basically," said Whitmarsh, "Red Bull broke FOTA - for money. After they had taken Bernie's offer, FOTA's unanimity was gone, and so was its power." In recent times F1 - like virtually every other form of motor racing - has taken a downward turn, in terms of both spectator attendance at the races and the number of folk watching them on the box. The worldwide financial meltdown in 2008 played a significant role, of course, and so emphatically have elevated ticket prices and the ever-increasing switch from 'free to air' to pay TV.
It's about more than that, though, and in my mind the rot started to set in back in 2001, when Mr Mosley, in his capacity as FIA president, sold the lease on F1's commercial rights to his good friend Mr Ecclestone - not FOCA - for what seemed like an astonishingly reasonable $360m. Even more remarkably, the deal was for 100 years. As Jackie Stewart remarked, "When the hell was there ever a deal lasting a century?" Well, this one did. That summer, shortly before his death, I spoke to Ken Tyrrell, and even in his frail state Ken was incandescent with rage about what had happened. "You wait," he said. "Bernie'll move them on to a bunch of bloody asset-strippers!" In the fullness of time, this indeed transpired, but before the rights came into the ownership of CVC in 2005, they were passed around like a tray of cakes to all manner of entities - notably TV companies and banks - and the eventual sale by Bayerische Landesbank to CVC was not without controversy. One of the bank's employees, Gerhard Gribkowsky, was accused of accepting a bribe of $44m from Ecclestone in return for putting a lower value on the shares when they passed to CVC, the company Bernie favoured, given its undertaking that he would be retained as chief executive. Ultimately Gribkowsky was convicted, and later came news that Ecclestone would stand trial in Munich on bribery charges. This was eventually conducted in 2014, but in a curiosity of German law the proceedings were abandoned upon receipt of Bernie's cheque for $100m. By this time there was widespread public disillusionment with F1, particularly among fans of long standing. During the period of CVC's ownership, Ecclestone continued to do the deals, but the company's interest in F1 went no further north than the bottom line, and as a consequence the shape of the championship began to change, ever more based on a country's ability to pay outrageous sums for a grand prix. Those without government backing found themselves under threat as Bernie, on behalf of Donald Mackenzie (and his ecstatic investors), made it clear that no race was sacrosanct. Farewell France, welcome Azerbaijan.
For all there may be fewer races in Europe, still this is where the bulk of F1 fans reside, and they didn't care for this development. Come to that, nor did they savour the muted sound of the new-generation hybrid engines, the 'drive by numbers' radio instructions constantly issued by engineers to drivers, the 'high degradation' tyres idiotically requested from Pirelli by the powers-that-be, the numbingly complicated sporting regulations, the endless investigations into track incidents by the stewards, the penalties so inconsistently applied, the fatuous gimmicks periodically introduced in a misplaced attempt to spice up 'The Show'. It was as if the sport's masters had colluded to drive any drama and passion out of grand prix racing - and, to complete the perfect storm, there was utter domination by one team, Mercedes. Quite a list, is it not? CVC eventually concluded that now was the time to cash up, and although unfortunately the company retains a shareholding in the business, it is at least denied voting rights. The power now resides with Liberty Media, which has very different ideas about the future of F1, one of which was that Ecclestone - with his resolute lack of interest in social media and, come to that, race promotion - was no longer going to run it. Somewhat to my surprise, Bernie has accepted the title of 'Chairman Emeritus', and the new boss man, Chase Carey, says that doubtless his advice will occasionally be sought. No more than that, though. Just as they say that in the end all political careers end in failure, so sooner or later Ecclestone's iron grip on the reins of F1 was going to be loosened, if only by natural events. For 40 years his 'divide and rule' policy kept at bay any threats to his position, and always he refused to discuss the question of his successor. That has now been settled for him. "The world changes so bloody fast - anyone who talks about what's going to be happening in four years' time is an idiot," Bernie said to me once. "Long-term planning is a nonsense." For countless years that philosophy served him well indeed. Perhaps, though, in the end it is also what brought him down.
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| By Nigel Roebuck | |
| Special Contributor |
In recent days, following the announcement of Bernie Ecclestone's removal from the helm of Formula 1, it has been irritating to see suggestions that until he came along, it was little more than a ragbag of bumbling amateurs. Perhaps these people never met Enzo Ferrari or Colin Chapman, nor remembered days when, at a place like Hockenheim, there was not a seat to be had. Chronologically my own life in F1 has more or less dovetailed with Ecclestone's, for 1971, when I started work as a journalist, was also the year that he moved in from the fringes of 'the sport', and began to transform it into 'the business'. Indisputably, without him F1 would never have grown into an entity of interest to such as CVC Capital Partners or Liberty Media. Following the death at Monza in 1970 of Jochen Rindt, whom he managed, Bernie took stock of the F1 scene, and resolved to become, let's say, more directly involved. A born dealer and already a wealthy man, in 1972 he acquired - on what may be called advantageous terms - the Brabham team, and he was on his way. That year - over sandwiches and beer in a pub - I interviewed him for the first time, and even by the standards of the day it was apparent that his love of racing was 'old school' in its roots. He was, for example, infuriated that Spa - the old Spa - had been ruled out of the world championship by the drivers: "If you put barbed wire down both sides of the Masta Straight, and told them it was a million to win, they'd all be there like a shot..."
Already you could see how Ecclestone's mind worked, and a homily from that day has stayed with me: "First you get on, then you get rich, then you get honest..." While you could never describe such as Ferrari and McLaren and Tyrrell and BRM and Matra as a 'ragbag of amateurs', undeniably their focus was on racing, rather than the commercial aspects of F1. Traditionally team owners had done individual deals with race promoters, and if you had a superstar driver you got more 'starting money' than for a journeyman. Nothing wrong with that as a principle, but no matter who was in the car you were paid a relative pittance, and it was to this problem that Ecclestone swiftly applied himself. What he proposed was that he do a collective deal with the promoters for everyone, and his fellow team owners, aware of Bernie's reputation as a 'robust businessman', willingly went along. He therefore effectively 'unionised' F1, setting up F1CA (later FOCA), and if circuit owners squealed, inescapably the power lay no longer with them: if they agreed to Bernie's fiscal requirements, all the teams turned up to race; if not, they had an empty paddock. The policy worked most satisfactorily. 'A dog will not howl if you beat him with a bone', goes the old saying, and Ecclestone well knew that if you took care of people's wallets, their hearts and minds would surely follow. Over time the team owners became rich beyond their dreams, and against that backdrop were only too happy to let Bernie do his thing: no surprise that his power base in F1 grew to a point that it became absolute. Not everyone was happy about this, most notably Jean-Marie Balestre, who in 1978 became president of FISA, then the sporting arm of the FIA. Very much an autocrat himself, the choleric Balestre concluded that Ecclestone's power needed trimming, and increasingly engaged in a battle with him over the finances and control of the world championship, which built up to what became known as the FISA-FOCA War.
Through the winter of 1980-81 F1 was split asunder, with the 'manufacturer' teams - Ferrari, Renault, Alfa Romeo - feeling obligated to side with the governing body, all the others remaining true to Ecclestone and FOCA. In the end it was resolved, as these things always are, and although Balestre proclaimed he had won, it was Ecclestone who emerged with precisely the deal he wanted: if FISA retained the right to make the sporting and technical regulations, that was fine with him; what mattered was that Balestre signed the first Concorde Agreement, under which FOCA was officially granted the commercial rights to F1. Max Mosley, then in the poacher role of legal adviser to Ecclestone and FOCA, ultimately became gamekeeper, of course, succeeding Balestre as president of the FIA in 1993. Now Bernie truly did have his ducks in a row. By this time F1 was established as a global sport, and if the focus remained in its cultural heartland, there were also grands prix in North and South America, Japan and Australia, Ecclestone repeatedly saying that 'Europe was finished', that his intention was to concentrate on new markets, particularly in Asia. More than anything else, F1 had mushroomed because of TV. When Bernie began to take control, relatively few races were televised at all, and fewer than that in their entirety. Gradually, though, he did ever more lucrative deals with TV companies in ever more countries, requiring them to broadcast every grand prix, and it was this development that brought riches on a level beyond anything seen before. At the end of each season, the spoils - less Mr E's very considerable percentage - would be divided up between the teams, based on their results.
In 1994, for no reason that was good, F1 came to the notice of the wider world. At Imola Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying, and 24 hours later Ayrton Senna - overwhelmingly the most celebrated racing driver on Earth - suffered the same fate. It had been 12 years since the last fatality at a grand prix, and in that time the world had immeasurably changed. When Gilles Villeneuve and Riccardo Paletti lost their lives, in 1982, the public reaction was much as it had always been: while sad, it was no more than occasionally inevitable in a sport that could never be safe. A dozen years on, though, the risk-averse culture was in full flow, and newspapers everywhere took a high moral tone, while taking care to cash in on the tragedies. I remember the front page of Monday's Daily Star: 'In the name of sport', the rag trumpeted, sandwiching its headline between photographs of Ratzenberger and Senna, slumped in their cockpits. And, at the bottom of the page, 'These young men died giving us thrills'. In truth it had ever been thus, and Niki Lauda pointed out that more remarkable was the absence of fatalities for so long. "For 12 years," he said, "God had his hand over Formula 1. This weekend he took it away." In Monaco, two weeks later, Karl Wendlinger was severely injured in practice, and suddenly it seemed as though it were impossible to come out of an accident unscathed. The following morning FIA president Mosley convened an emergency press conference. This was not, Max said, a moment for the niceties of unanimous approval, as defined by the Concorde Agreement: "Because of the gravity of the situation, and the force of public opinion, the time has come to push aside such considerations, and simply do what is right, in the general interests of the sport." Mosley then announced major rule changes, dealing primarily with three areas: the reduction of downforce and horsepower, as well as safety modifications to the cars. Many were introduced immediately, and all eventually came to be. If some were rather kneejerk in nature, collectively they changed the map of F1 forever, inevitably at some cost to the purist. As Professor Sid Watkins put it, "Society had changed, and the old panache of F1 was close to being no longer acceptable."
Human nature being what it is, tragedy had no adverse effect on the popularity of motor racing. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I remember from a conversation with Ecclestone on the subject a year or so later. "After Senna was killed, everyone said, 'That's it, Formula 1's finished. Brazil,' they said, 'don't even have a race in Brazil...' And what happened? This year we had the biggest crowd ever in Brazil. The TV ratings have been bigger than ever, and at every circuit the crowd has been up..." Perhaps, I suggested, what Imola did was remind people that this is a serious business. "Absolutely," Bernie said. "You and I have been around long enough to remember that, regrettably, we used to lose drivers. Obviously we weren't happy when it happened, but it was something that was accepted. "I remember, at the end of '68, we had the choice for Jochen of the Goodyear deal with Brabham, or the Firestone deal with Lotus. And I said to him, 'If you want to win the world championship, you've got more chance with Lotus than with Brabham. If you want to stay alive, you've got more chance with Brabham than with Lotus'. "It wasn't a bad thing to say; it was a matter of fact - and I'm not saying it now because he got killed in a Lotus. That was what the pattern was: people did get killed in Lotuses. Maybe Colin took things to the edge a bit - and Jochen was prepared to accept that. "That was how racing was, but now suddenly we've got a new breed of journalist, spectator, TV watcher, who've never seen anyone killed in a Formula 1 car." Ecclestone has been truly close to only a handful of drivers, of whom Rindt was indisputably one. Much earlier, though, he was close to Stuart Lewis-Evans, who died from burns after an accident at Casablanca in 1958.
Half a century later, in Valencia, I asked Bernie for his memories of his friend, and saw the other side of the man: I never thought to see a tear in his eyes. "He was just a super guy. We both lived in Bexleyheath and Stuart and I travelled together. People have no idea what it was like in those days. I was with him when they put him in the ambulance, and in the hospital - where they wrapped him in a blanket, and sat him in a chair, waiting for bloody hours for someone to come and take a look at him. "We needed to get him back to England as soon as possible, and the quickest way was on the Vandervell charter. Stuart was on a stretcher, which was strapped across three seats, and the only medical help he had was one nurse. He was conscious all the way back, and although he was in terrible pain he talked about the future, even asked for a cup of tea. "They took him to the McIndoe Burns Unit at East Grinstead, but it was too late - the initial lack of treatment had been crucial, and he died a few days later. I walked away from racing for a long time after that." As many have observed, almost uniquely in F1, Ecclestone, for all he has achieved, is curiously devoid of ego. "When people ask me if I'm proud of what I've done, I say, 'Satisfied perhaps, but proud, no.' One good thing I did, though, was get Sid [Watkins] involved." It was in 1978 that Bernie persuaded 'The Prof' to take charge of all medical aspects of F1, and over the next 30 years the lamented Sid, way more than any other individual, transformed attitudes and practices in this sphere of the sport. It is thanks to him that countless drivers are alive today.
Down the years Ecclestone dealt deftly with any attempt to compromise his position as F1's power broker, putting to good use his time-honoured practice of 'divide and rule', not least in dealing with FOTA (Formula One Teams Association), which was announced in early 2009. For once, the team owners had set aside their differences, and clearly their alliance was not going to sit well with Bernie. At its launch Martin Whitmarsh spoke of the importance of the championship calendar, from which America was then absent: "We should go there strategically, rather than leave it in the hands of the promoter, and consider only who's going to give us the most money to turn up..." Heresy. And there was more from Luca di Montezemolo: "What's certain is that the time for 'divide and conquer' to rule in F1 is over." Ecclestone went to work with his chequebook. "At the time FOTA was set up," said Whitmarsh, "Luca di Montezemolo [Ferrari], Dietrich Mateschitz [Red Bull], Mansour Ojjeh [McLaren] and Dieter Zetsche [Mercedes] had a meeting in Stuttgart, and they all agreed that they would not individually jump." The togetherness didn't last. From Bernie, Red Bull received a sweetener of $60million, after which Ferrari, normally the first to break ranks on these occasions, found an offer - this time $100m - equally irresistible. All they had to do was leave FOTA. "Basically," said Whitmarsh, "Red Bull broke FOTA - for money. After they had taken Bernie's offer, FOTA's unanimity was gone, and so was its power." In recent times F1 - like virtually every other form of motor racing - has taken a downward turn, in terms of both spectator attendance at the races and the number of folk watching them on the box. The worldwide financial meltdown in 2008 played a significant role, of course, and so emphatically have elevated ticket prices and the ever-increasing switch from 'free to air' to pay TV.
It's about more than that, though, and in my mind the rot started to set in back in 2001, when Mr Mosley, in his capacity as FIA president, sold the lease on F1's commercial rights to his good friend Mr Ecclestone - not FOCA - for what seemed like an astonishingly reasonable $360m. Even more remarkably, the deal was for 100 years. As Jackie Stewart remarked, "When the hell was there ever a deal lasting a century?" Well, this one did. That summer, shortly before his death, I spoke to Ken Tyrrell, and even in his frail state Ken was incandescent with rage about what had happened. "You wait," he said. "Bernie'll move them on to a bunch of bloody asset-strippers!" In the fullness of time, this indeed transpired, but before the rights came into the ownership of CVC in 2005, they were passed around like a tray of cakes to all manner of entities - notably TV companies and banks - and the eventual sale by Bayerische Landesbank to CVC was not without controversy. One of the bank's employees, Gerhard Gribkowsky, was accused of accepting a bribe of $44m from Ecclestone in return for putting a lower value on the shares when they passed to CVC, the company Bernie favoured, given its undertaking that he would be retained as chief executive. Ultimately Gribkowsky was convicted, and later came news that Ecclestone would stand trial in Munich on bribery charges. This was eventually conducted in 2014, but in a curiosity of German law the proceedings were abandoned upon receipt of Bernie's cheque for $100m. By this time there was widespread public disillusionment with F1, particularly among fans of long standing. During the period of CVC's ownership, Ecclestone continued to do the deals, but the company's interest in F1 went no further north than the bottom line, and as a consequence the shape of the championship began to change, ever more based on a country's ability to pay outrageous sums for a grand prix. Those without government backing found themselves under threat as Bernie, on behalf of Donald Mackenzie (and his ecstatic investors), made it clear that no race was sacrosanct. Farewell France, welcome Azerbaijan.
For all there may be fewer races in Europe, still this is where the bulk of F1 fans reside, and they didn't care for this development. Come to that, nor did they savour the muted sound of the new-generation hybrid engines, the 'drive by numbers' radio instructions constantly issued by engineers to drivers, the 'high degradation' tyres idiotically requested from Pirelli by the powers-that-be, the numbingly complicated sporting regulations, the endless investigations into track incidents by the stewards, the penalties so inconsistently applied, the fatuous gimmicks periodically introduced in a misplaced attempt to spice up 'The Show'. It was as if the sport's masters had colluded to drive any drama and passion out of grand prix racing - and, to complete the perfect storm, there was utter domination by one team, Mercedes. Quite a list, is it not? CVC eventually concluded that now was the time to cash up, and although unfortunately the company retains a shareholding in the business, it is at least denied voting rights. The power now resides with Liberty Media, which has very different ideas about the future of F1, one of which was that Ecclestone - with his resolute lack of interest in social media and, come to that, race promotion - was no longer going to run it. Somewhat to my surprise, Bernie has accepted the title of 'Chairman Emeritus', and the new boss man, Chase Carey, says that doubtless his advice will occasionally be sought. No more than that, though. Just as they say that in the end all political careers end in failure, so sooner or later Ecclestone's iron grip on the reins of F1 was going to be loosened, if only by natural events. For 40 years his 'divide and rule' policy kept at bay any threats to his position, and always he refused to discuss the question of his successor. That has now been settled for him. "The world changes so bloody fast - anyone who talks about what's going to be happening in four years' time is an idiot," Bernie said to me once. "Long-term planning is a nonsense." For countless years that philosophy served him well indeed. Perhaps, though, in the end it is also what brought him down.
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