F1 boss chats to TG's Eddie Jordan and editor-in-chief Charlie Turner

“I should have sued you.” – Bernie Ecclestone

I’m very relieved to report Bernie wasn’t talking to me, but to editor-in-chief Charlie Turner. Fourteen years ago, Charlie handed in his notice to Mr Bernard Charles Ecclestone at F1 HQ after six tumultuous months working on his magazine. Today, much to Charlie’s unease, we’re back in the same room (with its eclectic melange of art and artefacts, including a supersized bronze of the man himself, a framed broken plate entitled “Let it be” and a World Business Award, presented in 2002 by Mikhail Gorbachev) for me to interview the F1 ringmaster. Luckily as he utters these words he cracks a smile and shakes our hands, but some things never change…

At 85, Bernie shows no signs of slowing down or obvious succession planning for the sport that he’s spent the past 43 years guiding, managing and building into one of the world’s most valuable sporting commodities…

This interview was originally published before Liberty Media bought a controlling stake in Formula One.

Eddie Jordan: We won’t be long. Kick us out when you want, will you?
BE: OK, I will. [laughs]

EJ: Let’s go… Why are you a winner?
BE: Who said I was a winner?

EJ: I’m saying. You’ve been a winner all your life.
BE: I’m lucky.

EJ: No, no. That’s different. Why are you a winner?
BE: I’m lucky. That’s all.

EJ: You’re a gambler?
BE: Yup.

EJ: Does gambling come naturally to you?
BE: If I feel like something’s gonna be right, I invest in it, whatever it is.

EJ: Does that mean new races as well?
BE: Yep.

EJ: I’ve always described you as a visionary. I never really wanted to go to Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Singapore… but these are turning out to be sensational races. Did you have that in your mind all the time?
BE: Don’t forget I started looking at China a long time before any of those races happened. I always thought go east, not west…

EJ: What do you think your greatest skill is as a businessman? I mean, look at what you’ve created. You’re the son of a trawlerman. You didn’t have anything like this coming into life. What’s your skill?
BE: You might have asked that of an artist or a musician or whatever… but with me it just happens.

EJ: But you’re a dealer.
BE: That’s it, I’m a dealer. That’s exactly right. I’m a used car dealer.

EJ: What part of this job do you find gives you the most satisfaction?
BE: I suppose it’s knowing when you’ve come up with an idea that works, when you’ve got it right, whatever it is. I’m very, very happy with these races, I was delighted with Baku. People said I was completely mad; I was so happy when it all turned out all right.

Charlie Turner: Where would you like to go next?
BE: Turkey. Two races we’ve lost which I’m genuinely upset about were India and Turkey.

EJ: But I’ve got to ask you, then… It’s unlikely we’re going to see a French GP in the foreseeable future, Italy looks in grave danger, and Germany. Have you got good substitutes for these in the future?
BE: It’s not as easy as that… it’s disappointing to think that all these countries spend a lot of money trying to get the Olympics. Which, obviously, is not the easiest thing to do, and nobody makes any money out of. Yet, for the small amount of money they could [invest] in a Formula One race, they don’t want to do it…

EJ: Why do you think that is?
BE: I have no idea. It’s the same as in England. Silverstone is not, I’d say, super-safe – quite the opposite. These circuits don’t need a lot of money to make them safe.

EJ: Britain had no problem spending billions on the Olympics.
BE: Ah, yes. It’d be interesting to know exactly how much they got back, and what the country’s got back from that.

EJ: Are we getting a slightly noisier engine next year? Because the noise is an issue…
BE: It is, a BIG issue.

CT: And you’ve been very vocal in wanting to make the cars louder, wanting change…
BE: That’s the trouble. We need to get rid of Lauda… that’s a problem.

EJ: Yeah, but then you’d have no one to control Toto.
BE: Yeah, maybe you’re right, let’s keep Lauda.

CT: But in terms of the noise, you’ve been very vocal about wanting to change it, but it seems like Mercedes and Ferrari have a stranglehold on stopping that from happening.
BE: Not really. No, wait a minute. Somebody, Max was the one that said, “We ought to have smaller engines and you’re going to get more manufacturers,” I said to him at the time, “But why don’t we get the manufacturers in, subject to us having smaller engines? Not the other way around – not have the small engine and hope they come,” because they come and go when it suits them. So, that’s what the problem has been, and they spend a fortune on these engines, and they don’t want to dump them. And they’ve just convinced the board to spend all this money, and then you say, “Well, it seemed a good idea at the time,” and nobody knew how those engines would finish up. When they were designed no one would have believed they were going to be what we got.

CT: But how much can you influence the change?
BE: We can’t really because, as I say, the bottom line is that they have spent a fortune, and done a fantastic job. The engine, as an engineering project, is super.

CT: But it’s far too expensive.
BE: It’s not what we want.

EJ: It’s not sexy. I remember you, me and Flavio having a discussion and you saying, “Under the engine cover, no one cares what’s in there. Nobody cares.”
BE: Nobody knows.

EJ: But they don’t care, either. So, I’m one for saving cost. Should there be more common parts, for example? At present, you have the situation where Mercedes supply their teams, and only Mercedes win. Ferrari supplies its group of people. Surely it’s a two-horse race at the moment. It feels like there’s no room for the Jordan of years gone by…
BE: If it was a two-horse race it would be good, it’s a one-horse race.

EJ: Bernie, your relationship with Toto is a little bit strained.
BE: No. There’s no problem. Zero problem.

EJ: Do you see him as a threat?
BE: A threat for what?

EJ: Well, he’s very close to Ferrari and he’s very close to Mercedes. Do you see him in a position where he might try to oust you?
BE: I’m very happy for him to try. Or anybody else. It doesn’t bother me, these things. I mean it’s good.

EJ: Yeah, but Bernie, there have been times that you’ve been very frustrated with him. You were not happy with him about the engine…
BE: No, frustrated about the fact that they are in a position that THEY can – not him in particular – decide what they’re going to do. Because they supply the teams so when there’s a vote on something he votes, Ferrari vote, and all the teams they supply vote for them because they can’t vote any other way. So it’s not entirely a level playing field.

EJ: You have spies out there, and you must be very aware that he’s [Toto] close to Ferrari. How close is he?
BE: Was.

EJ: Has that broken up now?
BE: I don’t think they’ve ever been that close. I think they wanted to see Ferrari be a little bit more competitive, better at beating other people down the field, and Ferrari was happy to get the information it got. Because it got a lot of information from Mercedes…

EJ: And that’s as much as it is – it isn’t anything sinister.
BE: No.

EJ: If you were Toto, you were the boss at Mercedes, what would you say if your two drivers were running into each other as often as they are now?
BE: Well, it depends. I mean, this time of the year, I’d let them race, for sure. If, later in the season, it was a case of one of them needing to be sensible, and be like a team driver because another team were going to snatch the championship away from them, I’d then say to them, “You’d better start having a think about this and maybe you should let the other person in the team do the winning to get the points.” In this case… one of those two is going to win the championship, so that’s not going to be the point.

EJ: Is Toto strong enough to be able to deal with two major drivers like that in the team? What would you do… you’re Toto, you’re the boss.
BE: Keep racing.

EJ: What… keep hitting each other?
BE: Try not to hit each other. What do you want me to do?

EJ: Yeah. So you don’t think there is a credible formula to control those two?
BE: No. 

Words: Eddie Jordan