Bernie Ecclestone was the man who made F1 the business it is today, but his involvement in the sport grew from much more humble beginnings.
Bernie was involved in a British team called Vanwall in the 1950s, owned by businessman Tony Vandervell, who was becoming unhappy with Ferrari getting the lion’s share of ‘start money’, the appearances fees paid back then for starting a race.
Vandervell asked Ecclestone to try and find a solution, and he went on to show he was a commercial man who could out-fumble anyone and help the team owners, who were making no money at that time. He became ‘the promoter’ of F1 effectively by de facto and the rest is history.
Whilst oil companies had always been involved in supporting motorsport teams, the aforementioned Colin Chapman was the first man to bring proper sponsorship into F1 in 1968, with Gold Leaf Team Lotus.
Everyone had seen how successful Indycar was at branding, but somehow F1 hadn’t managed to work it out before then. It’s quite remarkable to think that back then people didn’t believe in putting branding on the cars. It just wasn’t the done thing.
When I joined Philip Morris in 1973, we started by putting branding on the car, then onto the circuit, grid girls and drivers’ overalls. At the time, my mission was to get as much branding around the circuit as I could, because we weren’t allowed to advertise on TV. I see the great work we’re doing now at CSM with motorsport partnerships and it’s infinitely more sophisticated than what we were doing in those days.
During that era, Jackie Stewart also began a personal sponsorship with Rolex, which was very well promoted. That was the very first time that a sportsperson had been associated with a super-luxury brand, and when you look at the multi-million-dollar endorsements of today’s sports stars, it’s fair to say it all started with Jackie.
The 1976 Japanese Grand Prix will forever be remembered as one of F1’s most iconic races, but it was also the event that made F1 a global TV product overnight.
In those days there was virtually no television. Brands Hatch used to pay the BBC to come and broadcast the Grand Prix.
By the end of 1976, James Hunt’s profile and Niki Lauda’s accident had transcended motorsport. The Championship went down to the last race, with just one point in it, but the broadcasters suddenly realised nobody had the Grand Prix.
Ever the entrepreneur, Bernie Ecclestone sat them all down and said they had to broadcast this Grand Prix and every race of next season, front-to-back, and pay a fee for the rights. The interest in Hunt and Lauda was so high that they all agreed to the deal, and F1 immediately became a global TV sport, broadcast in 15 or so major countries.
The ‘turbo era’ of the 1980s produced some of the most exhilarating racing F1 has ever seen. The engines were like hand grenades and whilst they could only do three qualifying laps on full power, it was phenomenal to see.
Brabham, then owned by Bernie Ecclestone, had one of the quickest cars on the grid, powered by four-cylinder turbo-charged BMW engines that could produce 1,500 horsepower.
Bernie used to like getting his drivers Riccardo Patrese and Nelson Piquet wound-up, and one year Patrese turned up at the Italian Grand Prix and completed a qualifying lap of Monza averaging 160mph.
It was an astonishing time for motorsport fans, but a hugely expensive one for the teams. Teams like McLaren were getting through 15 engines every race weekend.
From Fangio’s Mercedes team of the 1950s through to the Mercedes team of now, a feature of F1 has been teams enjoying periods of dominance. Over the years we’ve seen teams define their own era – Lotus in the seventies, McLaren in the eighties, Williams in the nineties and Ferrari and Red Bull in the 2000s.
The defining link between all these teams is the ability to create the perfect package, a combination of producing a dangerously quick car and an exceptional driver, underpinned by a great supporting cast of mechanics, marketers, strategists and analysts. While the focus is always the car or the driver, without the other elements you can’t dominate an era in the way that many of those teams did.
It’s difficult to compare drivers between eras, especially given how greats like Ayrton Senna were taken from the sport too early. But the record books show, for the time being, Michael Schumacher as the sport’s only seven-time world champion.
You see good drivers all the time, but the exceptional ones can be spotted almost instantly. I remember being at Spa in 1991 when Schumacher made his debut as a stand-in for Bertrand Gachot at Jordan. He qualified seventh with a phenomenal lap in the wet, and I said to someone “f*** he’s special!”.
What Hamilton is doing now is equally remarkable. He’s an exceptional talent and I’m sure will overtake Schumacher as the most decorated driver in F1 history and rightly one of the all-time greats alongside Senna and Fangio.
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Photo Credits: LAT Images