Bernie Ecclestone banks £300m as he cashes in his F1 shareholding

Sport’s supremo axed after 40 years
Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Kevin Eason24 January 2017

Bernie Ecclestone could walk out of Formula One with as much as £300million as he cashes in his shareholding in the sport he ruled for almost 40 years.

Ecclestone, one of the most formidable and enduring figures in world sport, has been pushed aside by Liberty Media, the American media group that has taken control of F1 for an estimated £6.4billion.

Chase Carey, the former vice-chairman of 21st Century Fox, will take Ecclestone’s job as chief executive.

The sudden switch, confirmed last night by Ecclestone, who claimed he has been “deposed” by Carey, will trigger an intriguing bout of musical chairs at the top of the world’s biggest motor racing series.

In will come Sean Bratches from ESPN as commercial operations director, while Ross Brawn, one of the most successful figures in F1 history after winning world championships with Benetton, Ferrari and his own Brawn team, will be handed a role to oversee the sporting side of the business.

But Liberty are thought to be keen to persuade Sacha Woodward-Hill, Ecclestone’s chief legal officer and most trusted aide, to stay on.

She has been at Ecclestone’s side for 20 years and knows the F1 business inside and out. Ecclestone has long tipped the 46-year-old lawyer to be his successor and Carey will be anxious to plug into her knowledge. There will also be a job for Duncan Llowarch, the chief financial officer, who has held the purse strings for Ecclestone, but Pasquale Lattuneddu, Ecclestone’s right-hand man at every grand prix, has said he will quit.

Although Ecclestone welcomed Liberty’s full takeover, he will sell his five per cent shareholding in the business and it remains to be seen whether he will take the honorary position of chairman emeritus offered by Carey as compensation for being relieved of day-to-day control of a Formula One business he has run for almost four decades.

At 86, Ecclestone remains in good health and full of energy. Friends say it is unlikely that he will go into retirement and many believe that he will have some alternative plan up his sleeve, perhaps even involving a rival motor racing series.

That remains to be seen, although Ecclestone has the best contacts in world sport, ranging from Vladimir Putin to some of the world’s best-known business executives, such as Sir Martin Sorrell, the chairman of WPP, the world’s biggest advertising agency. Sorrell started out as a fierce critic of Ecclestone but the two have become reconciled in recent times.

Ecclestone’s departure will come as a culture shock for the 11 teams in the sport who have not operated under anyone else but him. Their financial tussles over the years have been personal, occasionally vitriolic and usually unfathomable, but there will be many who will be sorry to see the father figure of the sport go.

However, world champion Nico Rosberg — described as “boring” by Ecclestone — welcomed the news. He told his Twitter followers: “Bernie. Mega job! But change has been overdue. Mr Carey, all the best in making our sport awesome again.”

Fans around the world have railed against the public face of Ecclestone, with his praise for Putin and Hitler and off-the-cuff comments about women.

But behind the scenes, Ecclestone kept many teams afloat when he ran F1 single-handedly and he was the prime mover in placing many drivers in their teams, particularly Lewis Hamilton, whom he rescued from a failing McLaren to move him to Mercedes, where he won two world titles.

Ecclestone leaves F1 with an estimated £2.3bn fortune plus his new payout from his departure, but money has never been his motivator. He lived modestly in the penthouse above his Knightsbridge office when he married Fabiana Flosi, his third wife, in 2012, and is rarely seen on the party circuit. However, F1 is his first love and leaving will be a wrench if he decides to make a clean break and go his own way.

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