A fisherman's son who failed to qualify at Monaco ended up owning Formula One
In 1958 Bernie Ecclestone climbed into one of his own cars at Monaco and lapped nearly a minute slower than the drivers he had hired. His talent lay elsewhere. By selling television rights and running the business side, he controlled Formula One's commercial empire for three decades.
Ecclestone was born on 28 October 1930 in a Suffolk hamlet near Bungay, son of a fisherman, and grew up in Bexleyheath in south-east London from 1938, staying put through the Blitz. He left school at 16 to test gas purity in a gasworks laboratory, studied chemistry at Woolwich Polytechnic, and after the war traded motorcycle parts and opened a dealership with Fred Compton. He raced in the 500cc Formula Three series from 1949, scoring occasional wins at Brands Hatch before crashes persuaded him to concentrate on property, lending and car auctions.
Management drew him back. He looked after Stuart Lewis-Evans from 1957 and bought two chassis from the defunct Connaught team; at the 1958 Monaco race his drivers missed the cut by five seconds, and his own test run was described as not a serious attempt. After Lewis-Evans died of burns from the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix, Ecclestone stepped away again, returning later as manager of Jochen Rindt, who became world champion after being killed at Monza in 1970.
During the 1971 season he offered Ron Tauranac 100,000 pounds for the whole Brabham team, took it over in 1972 and ran it for 15 years, winning 22 races and two drivers' titles with Nelson Piquet. Alongside other team bosses he set up the teams' trade body, known as FOCA, led it through its power struggle with the governing body, pioneered the sale of television rights in the late 1970s, and in 1987 founded the Formula One Group. The Concorde Agreement that year handed his companies the logistics of every Grand Prix too.
He briefly controlled World Rally Championship rights, ranked fifth on the Sunday Times Rich List in 2002, turned down both a CBE and a knighthood, and shared ownership of the football club Queens Park Rangers with Flavio Briatore for four years from 2007, seeing them promoted to the Premier League. Liberty Media bought the Formula One Group in 2017, and he left his emeritus role in 2020, the year he became a father again at 89. A London court found him guilty of tax fraud in October 2023; he agreed to pay over 650 million pounds, and received a suspended 17-month sentence.
Source: Bernie Ecclestone
