Formula One and Beyond

by Max Mosley

  I arrived late to the meeting of the teams in the Nürburgring paddock to find all except Bernie wanting to go. It’s OK, they said, the organisers have agreed the money so we can go – Canada is an important race and the sponsors want us there. I joined in, arguing that, if we went, every negotiation would end in cancellation before a deal could be done. Once you threaten, you must carry out the threat even if you don’t want to, otherwise you lose all your credibility. After a long discussion the majority eventually agreed. We maintained our stance and the race was cancelled.

  The organisers were furious and sued everyone including the FIA but ultimately lost. Although it would have been much easier to go, sticking to our guns made all the race promoters take us more seriously. From then on they knew that deadlines mattered and a threat to cancel would be carried out.

  From 1972 to 1978 we endured a seemingly never-ending succession of confrontations with the FIA’s CSI, both in its guise as rule-maker and when it was acting (or trying to act) as a cartel of race organisers. While the last thing we wanted was the organisers acting in concert, the FIA’s aim was to unite them. The first serious attempt to counter us was run by Henri Treu, a Dutchman with a family yacht business, who set up a race promoters’ association. When that didn’t work the CSI deployed its secretary-general, Claude Le Guezec, who was in charge at the time of our 1975 confrontation in Brussels. Claude, a former racer, was more formidable than Treu, but a bit of research in the Gray’s Inn library had given us a new weapon in the shape of (then) Articles 85 (no price fixing) and 86 (no abuse of a dominant position) of the Treaty of Rome. However, we never had to deploy EU competition law against Le Guezec because he was soon pretty much on our side.

  In the paddock immediately after the very wet 1976 Japanese Grand Prix I bumped into Huschke von Hanstein, a leading figure in German motor sport and the CSI. By then the constructors as a whole faced a major battle with World Championship Racing, a grouping of race organisers backed by the CSI and led by Pat Duffeler, who had been in charge of the Marlboro Formula One sponsorship programme. Duffeler was well known to all the race organisers and to the CSI. As early as 1972 he had organised dinner parties for senior CSI members where they had found themselves sitting next to very attractive young hostesses hired by the tobacco company. As men do, the poor old boys fancied their chances but the ladies always disappeared on the stroke of midnight when their contractual time was up. WCR planned to unite the organisers and finally defeat us.

  If they succeeded, all the hard-won improvements in Formula One that Bernie and I had introduced in the four years since we started working together would be lost and it would be back to the old ways: race schedules to suit each individual organiser rather than our mechanics, minimal prize money and no say for the British teams on the technical rules. Inevitably, the brunt of this contest would fall on Bernie and me – as if we had not got enough to do – and there would be reprisals against both of us as the architects of change should WCR win.

  Von Hanstein was WCR’s leading CSI supporter and was able to commit the German and Austrian races. I knew we faced a protracted and arduous battle with WCR. We also faced the prospect of Duffeler becoming a major figure in racing and interfering with all our plans to expand the sport and increase its importance. Worse, he would inevitably come under the influence of his backers, the militant old guard among the race organisers who wanted to keep the sport just as it had been in the days of Fangio. They did not understand that it needed to evolve and change, become more professional and modern, or face the prospect of declining to the point where there was not enough money to maintain it.

  ‘Huschke, why don’t you support us instead of Duffeler? Why do we have to have these internal fights instead of working together to promote the sport?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s your friend, the little guy,’ he replied. ‘Each year he wants more and more money and the organisers can’t afford it – now he wants $350,000. Obviously we have to do something.’

  ‘Come on, Huschke,’ I said, ‘you know that’s not the issue. Bernie and I have always said FOCA will share the profit or loss with any organiser, but they always refuse. I’ve never known people so anxious to keep their losses to themselves. You know you should come in with us – it’s more fun on the winning side.’

  I felt less confident than I sounded – and Huschke wandered off into the gloom and puddles looking quite happy and laughing quietly to himself. One could not help rather liking him despite him being one of our more dangerous opponents. It was interesting that he was, in effect, blaming the foundation of WCR on Bernie’s latest prize-money scheme.

  Shortly after my return from Japan I flew to Nice, which I have always preferred in the winter because there are no crowds, the weather is usually beautiful and one feels a sense of instant relaxation. I found Count Zanon in a restaurant with his wife and we started lunch. Ronnie and Barbro joined us a little later, having come from their flat in Monaco. Ronnie had just had his first drive in the six-wheel Tyrrell and I was curious to hear what he thought of it. His impression was that it had much better brakes than the March, as we had expected, but that otherwise it was difficult to distinguish from an ordinary car. The only effect of the four small front wheels was to make the bumps in the track more noticeable.

  But I was even more curious about the Monaco race. I knew WCR was a Monaco company and Michel Boeri, the president of the Monaco club, was a leading WCR supporter on the CSI. His race was one of those that would not agree our terms, so I asked Ronnie what he had heard. He said the Monaco organisers were not in the least worried because they would simply run a Formula Two race if FOCA would not go and were confident they would get all the top drivers. They don’t seem to realise, said Ronnie, that the drivers are all under contract and are anyway on the side of the constructors. I told him that Monaco did not seem to understand that they had upset so many people – including sponsors – at one time or another; that there was a formidable group of people who would take some pleasure in putting an end to that race. This was partly true and I knew it would make them worry a bit when it got back. It does no harm to make an opponent feel uneasy and I felt there was room for a little worry in the Principality.

  A few days later, Bernie and I met the Austrian organisers at Bernie’s flat in London. They obviously wanted to do a deal, but were prevented by a board who felt they ought to follow Germany. We could be reasonably sure that Brazil, South Africa, Long Beach, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Britain, Watkins Glen and Canada were on our side, while WCR were backed by Argentina, Spain, Monaco, France, Germany and Italy. Austria and Holland were in the balance, so it was important to win over Austria to break up their stranglehold on that solid group of races in August.

  We worked out a contract with the two Austrians, making a concession about practice times, and they left with the draft to seek board approval. Bernie spent the next week trying to consolidate our position with the friendly races and make inroads among the unfriendly ones. The Germans would probably have come over if we had agreed to race on the Nürburgring, but this would have involved breaking faith with the drivers and was out of the question following our agreement with them that the ’Ring was quite simply too dangerous for modern Formula One cars. We had all agreed 1976 would be the last race on the circuit even before Niki Lauda’s accident.

  While all this was going on, Duffeler was constantly trying to fix a meeting with Bernie and even waited for him when he went to collect Niki to take him to Brands Hatch for James Hunt’s victory celebration. I advised strongly against meeting him on two grounds. First, it would give him status – he would find it difficult to take the constructors on if we ignored him. Secondly, there was a possibility that we might have to attack the CSI in the courts for backing WCR, and negotiating with it might prejudice our position. The basis of a legal attack would have been to restrain the CSI from using its monopoly position to influence commercial matters in the sport, using the Treaty of Rome again. We might claim the CSI w
as doing this by backing WCR, so it was important that Bernie should reject Duffeler’s advances.

  First, however, there was a constructors’ meeting, held as usual at a hotel near Heathrow. Bernie and I recounted the latest news from the WCR battle amid much hilarity, but we warned the members that it was not going to be easy. Someone suggested that, as there was no Ferrari representative at the meeting (Daniele Audetto having already left), Bernie should go and see Enzo Ferrari to keep him informed, a proposal that was expanded to include me. Bernie and I did not tell the meeting that we had already made arrangements for a visit the following Thursday because we knew that Ferrari’s support in the crisis was essential. We believed he would back us if he were fully briefed, and it was crucial that we dispel the assumption that the argument was principally about money, despite all reports to the contrary.

  We wanted to make clear to him that the whole contest was one for control of Formula One; whether we could continue to have practice times to suit the teams or whether they should be scheduled to suit the lunch hour of the local dignitaries; whether we could continue to have our own pit passes or whether we would have to beg for them (perhaps to Mr Duffeler) then spend the night locating personnel, sponsors, drivers and so forth to give them their passes; plus a number of similar issues which were trivial to anyone except those who earned their living in motor racing.

  That night, Bernie and I had dinner with the RAC chairman, Sir Clive Bossom (whose father’s name, Winston Churchill famously said, ‘means neither one thing nor the other’). Also there were Dean Delamont, head of the RAC’s motor sport division and a powerful figure in the CSI, and Jack Sears, once an outstanding driver and at that point chairman of the RAC Competitions Committee. We had an extremely good dinner and Sir Clive told me at one point that the RAC had some 80,000 bottles of claret in the cellar. I made a mental note that I ought to try to become a member.

  We explained our fears about the WCR situation; that we had heard rumours (and read in the Sunday Times) of financial links between WCR and members of the CSI and FIA; how concerned we were that the CSI might use its power to revoke licences in order to back a commercial body like WCR; and that we felt it was wrong that the FIA should have a secret Swiss company.

  They seemed genuinely shocked at the suggestion that there might be some impropriety and Sir Clive decided to use his position as a vice-president of the FIA to get sight of the FIA accounts. Dean confirmed our view that, having published the calendar, the CSI could not cancel races or revoke circuit licences, and certainly not in order to force WCR on an unwilling organiser. We discussed the Sunday Times story and the possibility of further revelations (which came about ten days later), and decided that we should all do what we could to calm the situation while Sir Clive discovered what the true facts were. We left the dinner feeling that the RAC were genuine in their concern and would be formidable allies if, as seemed very probable, the CSI overstepped the bounds of their remit as the governing body of a sport.

  Having travelled to Italy the previous day, we set out in thick fog at 7.30am from our Milan hotel for our Thursday meeting in Maranello. When we got there we were ushered straight into Enzo Ferrari’s presence. He was then 80 years old and enormously impressive, an example of someone who had stayed at work despite his age. He still had all his faculties, reinforced by the authority of his vast experience. We were aware, as Bernie had said on the way down, that the ‘old boy has forgotten more strokes than you and I could think up in a month. He could destroy Duffeler and that mob, no trouble at all.’ Bernie used to say he had met only two people he would really want to be like, and one of them was Ferrari. I always suspected the second one didn’t exist, but Bernie intended each of his friends to think they were the one and be suitably pleased.

  ‘Now we can do something useful,’ Ferrari said as we sat down, making it clear he shared our view that the occasional constructors’ gatherings in Maranello were not very helpful (although enjoyable) but a meeting of this kind could be. He spoke no English but he had a way of speaking which was so clear that even with my limited knowledge of Italian, picked up from Brambilla, I managed to communicate with him quite well.

  We quickly found we were at one on objectives and tactics. He was strongly of the view that we should steer the row with the CSI and WCR away from money, which was in any event not the main issue, and on to the real questions of where the sport was going and how it should be run. He told Bernie to talk less about money, more about the sport. ‘You should never let people know you’re running a brothel,’ he said. ‘You have to pretend it’s a hotel and keep the brothel in the basement.’ Bernie saw the wisdom of this and started talking about safety and the sport in public, saving the finance for his dealings with promoters.

  Ferrari also felt we should prepare and publish formal statutes for the constructors’ association instead of keeping them secret. He pointed out that the power base of WCR was Monaco, where the company was registered, and the Monaco club’s president, Michel Boeri, was their main CSI supporter. ‘That is easily dealt with,’ he said. ‘We anyway don’t want to race at Monaco, that race is a farce – the road is too narrow, no one overtakes and it discredits motor racing by presenting a false image of the sport to the public.’

  Bernie and I agreed with all this and the more we talked, the clearer it became that his approach and ours were the same. This was a considerable relief because he was a formidable, if not essential, ally in the fight to repel WCR and was obviously going to make a big contribution to the actual planning of the battle. With Ferrari on our side, we were 100 per cent stronger.

  We crossed the road to their private restaurant, by now getting rather tight for time as our flight to London was at 5.15pm. However, someone had mentioned I was a wine enthusiast, so Piero Ferrari immediately brought out some remarkable bottles from his father’s private store. The lunch had started in a good atmosphere after the successful meeting and got more and more jolly as the excellent wine went round. As I was the driver, I could see Bernie (who hardly drinks at all) getting a bit nervous at the thought of me driving 150 miles back to Milan in the fog. We made it to Linate airport but the fog was dreadful and the plane sat at the end of the runway for nearly 30 minutes, hoping the fog would lift. It did and we got off, but not before I resolved I would not leave England again until I was on the plane to Argentina at the start of the 1977 season.

  Yet two days later, we were in the air again – this time heading for Brussels. In 1975 we had signed a three-year agreement with Zolder for the Belgian Grand Prix, an agreement that had become very expensive for the organisers due to currency fluctuations. Bernie had offered them a new, cheaper deal, more in line with what other countries were paying, provided they could get the Belgian club (the RACB), in the shape of Count de Liedekerke, its vice-president and chairman of its motor sport committee, to countersign the contract. If we could win over Belgium conclusively by securing the club as well as the organiser, it would be a major blow to WCR, all the more effective because Pierre Ugeux, the president of the CSI, was Belgian and, we thought, in WCR’s camp.

  The Zolder organisers met us at the airport and had a typist to prepare the new contract, but there was no Count de Liedekerke. He was shooting, we were told, but would countersign the next day. We demanded they telephone him, and it became clear as they talked to him that it was not going to be so straightforward. We had only agreed to go because they had promised us the count, and we informed them that we would not sign unless he did. So we agreed the contract, got it typed up and set off to find the count’s shooting party.

  After a lot of searching we found his rather nice chateau, spirited him away from his guests and listened while he said he thought the contract fine but it needed his committee’s approval.

  ‘OK, forget it,’ we said, playing hardball again. ‘No, no, we must agree,’ they insisted. So in the end the count signed – subject only to repudiation by the RACB motor sport committee. We thought it would be harder f
or the committee to repudiate its chairman’s signature than refuse to ratify an agreement. We returned home in good humour – now we could claim Belgium was with us, and various legal measures were open to us under Common Market law if the club repudiated our agreement and tried to cancel the race.

  Next day there was another constructors’ meeting about the rules. Mauro Forghieri was there for Ferrari and fortunately agreed with me that we should not rewrite them but simply rearrange them in a sensible order. Rewriting them would leave us, not the CSI, responsible for the next row about the rules.

  While we had been on the count’s trail the previous day, there had been a major meeting of WCR in Monaco, attended by the Argentinians – represented by Eduardo Bordeo, president of the sporting committee – and Fangio, the former five-time world champion driver (and reputedly Bordeo’s father). After the meeting, Duffeler had issued a press statement saying he was meeting Bernie in Paris on Friday to negotiate. We immediately told the press that we had no intention whatsoever of meeting Duffeler in Paris, and that any problems in Formula One could wait until the next CSI Formula One Working Group meeting in December.

  One English motor racing journalist thought our refusal to meet was wrong because it was disrespectful of Fangio. That was a view I could not understand – just because he was a great driver didn’t mean that all normal business dealing had to stop if he became involved, or that his view in a negotiation was of more value than anyone else’s. On the contrary, what was he likely to know about it all? Better he should keep out of the dust and dirt of the conflict so we could go on regarding him as a great driver rather than a mediocre organiser.