by Max Mosley
Apart from the errors, I made a lot of changes that worked at Hockenheim. These included numbering all the seats in the vast stadium (there turned out to be fewer than the circuit owners thought) and increasing some prices substantially. From one section of the grandstands you could see the entire infield, so I more than doubled the prices of the seats there. The officials of the municipality that owned the circuit were horrified, saying it would be bad for the town’s reputation, but I pacified them by promising to give each spectator a cushion. It worked, but at later events I was more inclined to leave well alone.
Also, with the help of Peter Macintosh, who had been their manager, I booked the Red Arrows display team for the race. They put on an amazing show, going down below the level of the highest grandstand seats to perform a manoeuvre just above the infield. Standing on top of one of the transporters, I felt I could reach up and touch the plane as it passed over my head. The huge crowd was delighted and, extraordinarily for an outdoor sporting occasion, gave them a standing ovation. A senior German official came to me afterwards and said he thought it had been very dangerous. I tried to appear offended and said, ‘But it’s the Royal Air Force!’ I think the pilots always made a special effort if they were abroad, particularly in Germany, provided no senior RAF officer was about.
By the time I left Formula One at the end of 1982, the pattern was well established. The events where the organiser asked the teams to take the risk had all turned out to be profitable, at least to some degree, but the teams still refused to get involved. Their business, they said, was going racing, not event management. Bernie took it all on himself after my departure. Furthermore, after the Watkins Glen experience, the teams wanted him to take all the risks on the prize fund even where, as in that case, there was no commercial involvement in the race itself. Bernie guaranteed the teams their agreed money and they were happy for him to do his own deal with each organiser.
Eventually, Bernie moved his arrangements with the teams on to an annual footing. He would do a deal for an annual prize fund with the teams, then collect whatever he could from each organiser. By the time he came to consider an IPO, or initial public offering, of shares in his business in 1997 he was making a lot of money. It seems the teams had not really thought about his side of the business until that point. They, too, were doing very well, with massively increased sponsorship and the involvement of several major car manufacturers. But what Bernie paid them each season, although it had steadily increased, eventually became a great deal less than his total receipts from the promoters.
Bernie’s deals with the race promoters by now included just about everything except the ticket sales, circuit advertising and hospitality rights. The latter by then belonged to McNally, who paid more for them than the promoter had been receiving but, by repackaging and linking some rights with the Paddock Club, was making a very good profit. Bernie owned the TV rights, the right to time the event – even the right to provide the safety car – and was collecting money for each. Some things, such as the timing, actually saved the promoters money because previously they would have had to pay timekeepers, but now everything was producing revenue for Bernie.
In the 1990s, he invested heavily in a multichannel TV system that, unlike the standard free-to-air coverage, was available only on pay TV. You could choose from six channels, one of which was the same live timing screen that the teams were given in the pits. You could even have natural sound, almost like being at the track. As a concept it was well ahead of its time, but it involved taking hundreds of people and some 200 tons of equipment to each race. I don’t know the figures but suspect it made little if any profit. Bernie’s deal with the teams meant he had to give them their percentage from the gross rather than after deducting costs. He eventually stopped it but today the whole thing could be streamed over the internet.
The internet rights to Formula One were one of the few things Bernie didn’t fully exploit. For some reason, he always had a blind spot for it, even though I was urging him to put live timing on the web as early as 1995. It seemed to me that it would be a huge boost to the TV coverage and a potential source of revenue if you could have the same information as the teams right there on a computer beside your television. It was technically feasible even back in 1995. Of course, you could get live timing on Bernie’s multichannel system, but unless you had two television sets you had to leave the live picture to see the timing. It seemed obvious that most people had a computer plus a TV, while almost no one would have two televisions in the same room, but Bernie did not agree.
However, neglect of the internet was a relatively minor matter back in the 1990s and by then, after 20 years of hard work, Bernie had a very significant business indeed.
15
A PEACE OF SORTS
Once things had settled down after the Concorde Agreement was signed in 1981, Bernie did a deal with several Las Vegas casino owners to hold a Formula One World Championship race in their town. The idea was to run it on a temporary circuit set up within the (very large) Caesars Palace car park. When the Caesars group came over to negotiate, we took them to a party in the Royal Albert Hall given by Essex Overseas Petroleum Corporation, who sponsored Lotus. Essex was an oil-trading firm then earning untold sums of money. The party was completely surreal – David Thieme, the company’s owner, held a dinner on the floor of the auditorium for all the main Formula One people. His customers and staff were placed in the tiers of seats above. He flew in the three most famous French chefs of the time to prepare the dinner with the help of staff from a big London hotel, and hired top entertainers for later in the evening.
During the dinner the Caesars Palace casino manager, Billy Weinberger, suddenly turned to Bernie and me and said jokingly: ‘Have you ever seen that film The Sting?’ I understood what he meant – the whole thing was so weird you really could have thought we’d laid it all on just for him. He later took me to one of the London casinos where a large room full of people were gambling, and explained they were all there for the benefit of just one man who had won a great deal of money. Billy very discreetly pointed him out. The casino needed the right atmosphere and surroundings to keep him there until they could win it back.
Arriving in Vegas, Bernie had booked me into the Caesars Palace Fantasy Tower. I was surprised to find a large mirror on the ceiling directly above the huge circular bed. I called Bernie to ask what the mirror was for and he explained it was so one could comb one’s hair in bed. I really should have worked that out for myself without having to call him for an explanation. In addition to the usual bathroom there was a Jacuzzi, big enough for several people, in the corner of the room. Apparently, at least one of the drivers took full advantage of all these facilities.
The next day we were having breakfast when Billy Weinberger took a call from someone who was obviously important. When the call finished, he told us the biggest gambler in the world had just said he was flying in for the race. I couldn’t resist asking just how big the biggest in the world was. Apparently, when he had been in Vegas for the Leonard–Hearns fight, he had ‘dropped’ $8 million in Caesars and another $7 million down the Strip. It’s the reason the big gambling centres run these events – they give the high rollers a reason to visit.
Nelson Piquet, driving for Bernie, won the Formula One World Championship at that Vegas race by a single point from Carlos Reutemann by finishing fifth. Carlos started from pole but ended up eighth, one lap behind. Bernie decided to join a big game that night with a group of elderly Chinese ladies and invited me to partner him. Fortunately, I declined. I watched him lose well over $100,000 but, with Brabham’s World Championship win, he was still well ahead on the day.
Having made peace with us, Balestre had a confrontation with the drivers. He introduced a number of clauses the drivers didn’t like in the application form for the so-called super licence they needed to drive in Formula One. We were not very concerned either way, but we encouraged Balestre knowing that a row with the drivers would keep him busy a
nd also stop him using them against us in any dispute over the rules. They had, after all, greatly helped him over the skirt issue.
For the first time ever the drivers organised an effective strike and credit for that must go to Niki Lauda. At the start of the first day of practice for the 1982 South African Grand Prix, he had secretly hired a bus, persuaded all the drivers to board and took them to a Johannesburg hotel he had booked so that their teams could not make contact and put pressure on them in the usual way. What none of us knew at the time was that Ferrari were quietly giving the drivers legal and tactical advice via their driver Didier Pironi. Enzo Ferrari and Marco Piccinini were on manoeuvres again because they saw Balestre getting too close to us and wanted to move the fulcrum of the balance of power slightly away from our side. Helping the drivers give Balestre problems was all part of the process.
Niki and Pironi flew to the circuit from their hotel by helicopter to negotiate with Balestre and kept the other drivers informed. Eventually, they seemed to give in and the race went ahead, although a day of practice had been lost. But the offending clause that stopped the drivers changing teams easily (and was probably in restraint of trade and thus illegal) was quietly dropped. Balestre fined the drivers but they succeeded in getting the fines reduced in the FIA Court of Appeal, much to his annoyance.
This led him to abolish the right of appeal from the race stewards on the grounds that the public should not have to wait while the results of a race were discussed in a tribunal. Years later when I was elected, I reinstated the right of appeal. It was annoying if we (i.e. the FIA executive) lost, but an independent body to hear appeals was in my view essential. I don’t think Balestre, despite being French, thought much of Montesquieu or the separation of powers. The idea that the executive, the legislature and the judiciary should be separate and independent of one another was not high on his list of priorities, yet it is just as essential to a properly run sporting body as it is to a country.
Despite the Concorde Agreement, peace with the FIA was short-lived. The teams running with the Cosworth DFV eight-cylinder engines were lighter but had less power than the continental teams with their 12-cylinder and turbocharged engines. The minimum weight limit, however, prevented the British teams from using this potential advantage. Clever minds can often spot a loophole, though, and two of them latched on to a clause in the regulations allowing the car’s fluids (oil, water, brake fluid etc.) to be topped back up to their normal levels before a car was weighed at the end of the race. Brabham and Williams hit on the idea of water-cooled brakes.
The cars were fitted with a water tank and a device to squirt water on to the brakes to cool them. With the water tank full, the car complied with the minimum weight rule, but empty, it was significantly under the limit. There was an entirely justified suspicion among officials and rival teams that the water was being emptied soon after the start, perhaps even during the formation lap, so that the car could run for the entire race well under the weight limit. When other teams protested, the stewards decided that topping up the tanks with a large quantity of water in order to get the car’s weight back up to the minimum after the race was illegal, despite the letter of the rule.
While this was going on, the political scene in France was shifting. In 1981 François Mitterrand had been elected president and Guy Ligier (the driver who said I’d pushed him off in that Spanish Formula Two race back in 1968, described in chapter 4) was now the owner of a successful independent Formula One team and allied with us. But, more importantly, at a low point in Mitterrand’s political career when he was accused of faking an assassination attempt in 1959 (the so-called Observatory Affair), Guy had been an absolutely loyal friend and acted as his driver and bodyguard just when others were deserting him. Mitterrand had not forgotten and Guy was now in a good position in the French political establishment. This led Balestre to start to come over more to our side plus, in a funny way, I think he felt more comfortable with us than with the big car manufacturers. He’d had disputes with some of them in his L’Auto-Journal days.
As a result, when Brabham and Williams took the water tank question to the FIA Court of Appeal, Balestre was on our side. Meanwhile, Ferrari and the manufacturers, who were aware of the political changes, were watching him carefully. One of them even arranged for a photograph of Balestre in SS uniform to circulate, and also had a recording of him telling me on the telephone that we shouldn’t worry about the water tank appeal – the FIA Court of Appeal was in his pocket and the judges detested Marco Piccinini, the Ferrari team manager. We would win, he told me. The people responsible told Ferrari about the recording and said it was made entirely by chance by an amateur enthusiast (a tale worthy of the News of the World in later years). It made me quite wary from then on about anything I really wanted to keep secret. Enzo Ferrari, however, told them not to publish the transcript, so no more was said.
When the water tank appeal was lost, the FOCA teams announced they would not participate at the next race, the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, unless water-cooled brakes could be used. We argued that the FIA Court of Appeal had effectively changed the rule on topping up and done so without proper notice. But Tyrrell had just signed a sponsorship deal with a local Italian ceramics company and felt obliged to take part despite our boycott. Although the field was greatly diminished, the Italian crowd was happy with a display by the two Ferraris, while Tyrrell’s presence ensured that there were enough cars for the race to count for the championship. It became clear to me that politically, FOCA was a busted flush, an instrument that would break in your hand at the key moment. The real power in Formula One lay with the FIA, which was coincidentally holding a major meeting in Casablanca.
We needed to be there, if only to keep the friendly elements onside, so Bernie, Teddy Mayer and I went to Morocco in a hired plane. By now Balestre was almost entirely in our camp and, as a result, had increasing problems with the manufacturers. In particular, Marco Piccinini didn’t want Balestre too close to us, as this might perhaps have resulted in rules that Ferrari didn’t like. So he set out to destabilise Balestre in much the same way as we had three years earlier. His main ploy was to get the Italian oil industry to use its Russian connections (which were strong) to influence the USSR delegate on the World Council.
The Russian delegate seldom did more than say something anodyne to get his name in the minutes before setting off for a good dinner at the Tour d’Argent. He always had an interpreter with him, who was rumoured to be a full-on KGB man. During the Casablanca meeting, he made a speech for the first time. His interpreter then spoke at length in French. We still don’t know whether the first speech bore any relation to the second, but with some 20 or so votes in his pocket from the countries that made up the USSR in those days, he had to be taken seriously. Two decisions went against Balestre in Casablanca and he understood Ferrari’s message.
We were due to report back to a FOCA meeting as soon as we got home, but Bernie had sent someone from the hotel to buy all three of us full traditional Moroccan outfits including a fez, a long shirt-like garment and shoes that pointed up at the toes. He insisted we should turn up for it dressed like that. After a few minutes of frivolity, we had to report that all the manufacturers’ proposals had gone through because the failure of the Imola boycott meant the organisers, and hence FISA, no longer feared us. Any future threat to stay away would be seen as empty and would be ignored. The rest of the meeting was taken up with berating Ken Tyrrell for breaking ranks and going to Imola.
By 1983, the power imbalance between the teams with Cosworth V8s and the newly emerging turbocharged engines had become extreme and, from 1984, fuel consumption and later boost pressure were limited to keep power outputs under control before the turbo was finally banned in 1989. Among our teams, Bernie’s Brabhams already had a turbo based on the four-cylinder BMW road car engine. Compared with the sophisticated Ferrari and Renault turbocharged engines it was relatively simple – it even used an engine block from the BMW 2002 road car
– but was good enough to win the 1983 World Championship for Nelson Piquet and Bernie.
After five years of effort by Renault as the turbocharging pioneers, and Ferrari not far behind, it was extraordinary that a relatively low-key BMW programme would be the first to win the championship with a turbocharged engine. When Paul Rosche (he of the Formula Two engine eight years before) got back to Munich after his triumph, the BMW board of directors had arranged for a traditional Bavarian brass band to be on the airport tarmac to greet him.
Apart from doing an excellent all-round job, Rosche’s department at BMW had heard of an old fuel formula in the archives of a German chemical company that had been developed in the Second World War when Germany was short of lead. Being lead-free, it complied with the Formula One octane rules but behaved as if it didn’t. It had apparently been formulated for a very high-performance engine (probably a fighter plane) and was ideal for a turbocharged racing engine. It was rumoured that the original wartime technical specification was still marked ‘top secret’. It gave an instant increase of nearly 100 horsepower. The BMW dynamometer could measure up to 1200 bhp but this was not sufficient to allow the engine to be tested at maximum power. The estimate was 1500 bhp when it was set up for qualifying. It must have been terrifying to drive.
The rest of 1982 was relatively quiet except that Bernie and I hit on the idea of moving the South African Grand Prix to Zimbabwe, then newly independent. We thought this might make an African Grand Prix possible, but without the South African problem. Our lawyer in South Africa was friendly with Humphry Berkeley, a maverick former Conservative MP who had the right connections and could introduce us to the new Zimbabwe government. We were not over-optimistic. Although there was a circuit, it was nowhere near what was needed, but maybe the newly independent government would develop it and finance a race as a matter of national prestige. I got the job of going there to investigate, accompanied by Berkeley and an associate of his from the UK.
