Question: Bernie, there are hundreds of stories about you and still people find it hard to work out who you are. Who is Bernie Ecclestone?
Bernie Ecclestone: An ex-used car dealer. (laughs)
Question: How then did you end up in motor racing, ‘creating’ what we know today as Formula One?
Bernie Ecclestone: I used to race motorcycles and cars, and then I bought Brabham. Somehow I’ve always been involved with racing. I started racing and I was running a business. Racing was sort of a hobby.
Question: Your racing career was a short-lived one. Was it disappointing when you realised you weren’t good enough? It seems to be the only thing you have struggled with…
Bernie Ecclestone: It was not a case of not being as good as I wanted to be. It was a case of how much effort you put into it. I was running a business, and running that business was more important than racing. So I concentrated on running a business and not on racing. That’s why I stopped.
Question: Did you ever have a role model?
Bernie Ecclestone: No. Because you can never say that you want to be like somebody else. Otherwise I would say I would like to be like Robert Redford. But these things don’t happen.
Question: Can you say what these three things mean to you - money, power and success? Let’s start with money…
Bernie Ecclestone: It means zero to me.
Question: Money, power and success - you have all three. Which of the three could you go without?
Bernie Ecclestone: I would rather not go without money, but it is not the most important thing. Success? Success you get if you have achieved something. Not having success would mean doing nothing - lying in bed all day long.
Question: There is a rather unusual item in this room - something one might not automatically associate with you - a fire fighter’s helmet. There must be a story connected to it…
Bernie Ecclestone: I was once asked what I would write in my job description and I said I am a fire fighter. That is exactly what I am - a fire fighter! A lot of people think that I start more fires than I put out…
Question: If you hadn’t ended up in motor racing, did you have a ‘Plan-B’?
Bernie Ecclestone: I always wanted to run a business. I realized that to be a race driver you need to do it full time - and I was not prepared to do that. I wanted to run a business.
Question: There are still many who believe your biggest motivation is money…
Bernie Ecclestone: I have never done anything for money. Money is a by-product of what I do. From the early days onwards. I had a very successful business when I was 20 years-old. What motivated me even then was to do good deals - not to make money. Money comes out of good deals, which people don’t understand. I don’t think that you will find anyone who is more than comfortably off doing what he does just to make more money.
Question: There is a notion in the paddock that it still takes 12 team principals to make one Bernie Ecclestone. What do you think when you hear something like that?
Bernie Ecclestone: We will see! (laughs) They should probably all see that they run their own businesses properly and not worry about others’. What is good for Formula One is good for everybody involved - teams and companies. Too many people only think about what is good for them. It’s the same with the rules - they only think about what can make them win.
Question: Is it all about ego?
Bernie Ecclestone: I wouldn’t call it ego but stupidity. They should think about the whole global side of it. All the teams are very competitive and want to win, which I support completely, but they need to want to win on level terms and not try to get a big advantage. If they get an advantage because somebody designs a better car or they have a better driver or strategy, then super. But they should not try to devise things so that they can go in knowing that they have an advantage. Lots of them would like to go in and have a little bit of a bigger engine than the others, which is not really the way to go.
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