Formula One and Beyond

by Max Mosley

  Balestre didn’t find out what I was up to until August. Apparently, he was in his swimming pool and Marco Piccinini, who was visiting him, casually mentioned the forthcoming election. Balestre was taken by surprise. There was a full-on, ‘Quoi! Quoi? Quelle election?’ – he had forgotten that his four years as FISA president would be up in October. He also took this position and his FIA presidency completely for granted, often saying in interviews that he would only leave FIA headquarters in a coffin.

  I had a long-standing arrangement to go on a family holiday in Italy but was able to campaign on the phone. We had rented a small house in the grounds of Cetinale, owned by Lord Lambton. Formerly a British government minister, he had retired there after the News of the World published pictures of him having fun with two young ladies back in 1973. I spent most of the holiday ringing club presidents all over the world and, interestingly, none told me I didn’t have a chance, although a few said they would not vote for me.

  At one point, Paul Channon, another well-known Conservative politician, visited. Over lunch, he and Lambton were surprised to hear that Balestre had not found out about my campaign until I had spoken to about half the FISA member countries. They said this indicated great hostility to him and that I would probably win. They said if someone in their party campaigned like that against Mrs Thatcher, she would have known within a day or two.

  The main FISA positions were always held by the president of the national motor sport body in one of the member countries. As an outsider, I was still eligible if proposed by a national authority, but electing me would be a big change. Not only would it be completely unprecedented to have someone who was not already president of one of the national authorities, but I had also been one of FISA’s main opponents less than a decade before.

  I felt I needed to reassure the electorate that they would not risk being saddled with someone completely unsuitable if they elected me. So on 18 September I announced in a letter to all the clubs that, if elected, I would not serve a full four-year term but would resign and offer myself for re-election after 12 months. In this way, they could be rid of me quickly if they wished. I also emphasised that I was in a position to do the job without pay. The FIA is a non-profit organisation under the French law of 1901 that places strict limits on the amount officers of such a body can be paid. Fortunately, I had made a bit of money myself and now had access to family money after the death of my father.

  On 25 September, Balestre sent a letter in reply, attaching numerous letters of support from motor sport luminaries including Monaco’s Michel Boeri, Ron Dennis (McLaren), Piero Ferrari (Ferrari), Jean Todt (Peugeot) and Frank Williams (Williams), together with a certificate of good health. He also said he had letters from 31 national club presidents pledging their support, all of which were available for inspection. It’s probably fair to say that it would have been unwise to refuse to send a letter of support if asked by Balestre to do so.

  Balestre was absolutely confident of victory. On the morning of the election, Bernie suggested to him he should find a compromise with me, but he showed Bernie a list of all the countries and their voting intentions: only two were for me, with two more marked as doubtful. All the rest were for him. It seems he had not considered the possibility that, with a secret ballot, someone might tell him one thing but do another. Bernie, as ever, had a foot in both camps, understanding the old political adage that if you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus. Had Balestre won, Bernie would have been his friend and backer.

  Some of my supporters expressed the fear that the secretariat would number each dossier and record which delegate received it. With each ballot paper carrying its dossier number in invisible ink, the secretariat could then tell Balestre how each country had voted. From my dealings with the secretariat, I knew they would never be that organised or, indeed, capable of keeping it secret, but the perception was a danger. Everyone was terrified of reprisals if they were discovered to have voted for me should I lose. To overcome this fear, I insisted that the ballot papers should be made available randomly and separate from the dossiers. Fortunately, Balestre was so confident of his support that he did not refuse.

  An African delegate who was secretly an ally told me he would walk twice round the room just before the ballot and drop two stones. Apparently, this was some sort of magic ritual in his homeland and would have a powerful effect on the outcome of the election. But to make absolutely sure of success he needed to sacrifice a horse. Could I help pay for the horse? I mentioned this to Jean, who was horrified. ‘You can’t – poor horse!’ she said. But I explained no sub-Saharan horse would actually suffer – it was just a polite way of asking for a bung. I told the delegate my wife was a horse lover, so unfortunately I couldn’t help finance the sacrifice.

  The result was sensational and unexpected. The countries voted 43 to 29 in my favour. It was a terrible shock for Balestre, who nevertheless behaved with great dignity. Much of the motor sport press, particularly in France, was equally stunned. The FISA membership seemed pleased with the result but I realised that, now I was in charge, they probably wouldn’t tell me if they weren’t. Winning that election against all odds and prognostications was an extraordinary sensation. I felt that, at 51, for the first time in my life I had achieved something truly significant. Inwardly I felt triumphant, but was very careful not to let anyone see just how elated I felt. Above all, I was very conciliatory towards Balestre in the days that followed. It was a time for magnanimity, not triumphalism.

  18

  BERNIE’S £1 MILLION DONATION AND MORE POLITICS

  Winning the FISA election forced me to make big changes in my life. I had to give up the motor racing business I had become involved in with Nick Wirth – a design consultancy, mainly dealing in computerised simulation. Nick is a brilliant engineer who has since been very successful, particularly in North American racing and, increasingly, in areas away from sport using some of the same technologies. The presidency also took some getting used to: instead of thinking of ways to persuade Balestre or his predecessors to do what needed doing, I could get on and do it myself provided the World Council agreed. I started running the World Council meetings as I had the Manufacturers’ Commission. The various commission presidents were accustomed to giving long reports on their activities, covering all their various briefs from karting to truck racing, rallying to cross-country events. I abolished oral reports and insisted they should be submitted in writing and circulated at least two weeks in advance. This was mainly to give the council members time to consult the specialist experts in their home countries, but also to eradicate the boredom of listening to reports one could perfectly well read for oneself.

  Any discussion was then based on questions arising from a written report which was also much better informed, the questions having been checked by specialists in the bigger clubs. Often, a report would be agreed without discussion. All this will seem very basic to anyone who has run a large organisation, but it was a big change. The meetings would usually be over in a morning, compared with two days under Balestre, but he was always generous enough to concede that things had improved.

  As promised, I stood for re-election after a year and was unopposed. I then told Balestre I was going to stand for the full FIA presidency a year later in the autumn of 1993. I suggested we create a Senate and that he could be its president. This was actually Bernie’s idea. Balestre concurred and did not stand again for the FIA presidency. After an abortive challenge from the RAC’s Jeffrey Rose, I was again elected. The FIA may not be seen as a major world body in England but it certainly is in France, where it was founded in 1904, and beyond.

  In addition to creating a Senate, I asked the General Assembly to restructure the FIA and its non-sporting commissions, all of which were theoretically on a par with the motor sport commission, FISA. The new idea was to have two divisions, one for motor sport, the other for road cars. This was all agreed and formed the basis of a major new effort for the ordinary
motorist, whose interests had been largely taken over by the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme, the FIA’s rival to which all the major motoring clubs belonged.

  Eight years after abandoning the idea of British politics, I was introduced to John Smith, the leader of the Labour opposition, by his chief of staff David Ward. David was an amateur racer I had met through Jonathan Ashman, an official with the RAC Motor Sports Association. John Smith invited me to dinner at the House of Commons in July 1993 and I immediately liked him. Unprompted, he volunteered an insight into the problems I had experienced because of my father. He fully understood that one could never know whether a rejection was because of one’s own shortcomings or for the other reason.

  With John Smith’s agreement, David undertook a project to establish an all-party group of members of the European Parliament concerned with motoring issues. It soon became apparent that David had great political expertise and could really make a difference, particularly on the road car side, but his scope was limited because he had a full-time day job with John.

  Then, very sadly, John died suddenly during the 1994 Monaco Grand Prix. David was scheduled to attend and in the end came anyway because there was nothing he could do back at home. He spent the weekend thinking about his future. We met again the following Monday and I asked him to take charge of our Brussels office. Later that day he met Tony Blair to tell him he had decided to leave UK politics and work with me at the FIA.

  At David’s suggestion, I joined the Labour Party’s 1000 Club. In 1995, he took me to meet Tony Blair, who made coffee in his Islington house and listened politely to our views on road safety. I invited Blair and his family to the 1996 British GP and they ended up spending the day in my room at Silverstone because the RAC wouldn’t invite him to their official facilities. It was the first time I had met his wife. Until she mentioned it, I hadn’t realised she had written a very impressive counsel’s opinion for the FIA on some legal technicality. I had not made the connection with Cherie Booth, who I imagined to be some obscure but very intellectual Queen’s Counsel. She was lively and interested and well up for fun, so Damon Hill took her and the children round the circuit at very high speed in a road car.

  Following Blair’s visit to the British Grand Prix, David was approached by Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, who asked if Bernie might be willing to become a financial donor to the Labour Party, even suggesting the sum of £1 million. It fell to me to approach Bernie. I strongly urged him to agree because I wanted a friendly reception in Downing Street when we raised road safety issues, and suggested to Bernie that it would be easier to protect Formula One from political interference in a crisis – for example, a big accident – if we were already positioned close to the government. I was very conscious of the difficulties we had experienced after Ayrton Senna’s death and the very real danger of politicians trying to get involved in our sport.

  A meeting was arranged between Bernie and Blair in the House of Commons, this time organised by Michael (now Lord) Levy, who had become Labour’s main fundraiser. At the end of the meeting, Levy took Bernie into another room and asked him immediately if he was willing to make a donation, but Bernie wasn’t impressed by what must have felt like a premature shakedown and refused.

  The matter was then dropped until early 1997 when Blair made it clear that he would not raise the top rate of income tax if Labour came to power. I rang Bernie to point out that Blair had just saved him rather a lot of money and he should perhaps think again about a donation. Rather unexpectedly, he agreed. David took the £1 million cheque to the House of Commons and handed it to Jonathan Powell. Contrary to the myth that has persisted ever since, the donation had nothing to do with tobacco sponsorship. It had been banned at British races since the 1970s, so the Labour manifesto promise to outlaw tobacco advertising was no threat to Formula One.

  In the autumn of 1997, several months after the Labour victory, there was a major row. Someone tipped off the Daily Telegraph that Bernie had given Labour the seven-figure sum and, understandably, it instantly made a huge splash. David and I agreed that Downing Street should reply to inquiries by saying the party would follow the rules, publish the list of donors of more than £5000 on the due date and, if Mr Ecclestone had made a donation that qualified, he would be on the list.

  David set off to Whitehall to convince Jonathan Powell but it was already too late. Downing Street did not react calmly – they were badly advised and admitted the scale of the donation long before it was required. Inevitably, the Tory press claimed the money was a bung for allowing tobacco advertising to continue in Formula One. No one thought to point out that this was an absurd accusation because there had been no tobacco advertising at the British Grand Prix, or at any motor sport event in the UK, since the 1970s.

  By autumn 1997, however, a different tobacco problem had emerged. The European Commission produced a draft directive banning tobacco sponsorship. In September, David and I had a meeting with Tessa Jowell, then health secretary, together with Tony Banks, then sports minister, and civil servants from the Department of Health who seemed to radiate disapproval. Tessa started by saying that smoking was costing the National Health Service more than £1.5 billion a year because of tobacco-related illnesses. I replied that if we were going to talk money, it also brought in more than £11 billion a year in tax, on top of which most of the tobacco-related deaths were among pensioners, saving the Exchequer even more money.

  In fact, David and I agreed with Tessa about smoking but I could not resist the temptation to irritate the ayatollah-like civil servants. I explained that the real question was what the British government could do to help us eliminate tobacco sponsorship from a global sport. We did not want this to happen piecemeal – it needed to be done worldwide and all at once. It became clear we needed to meet Blair.

  A few weeks later, Bernie, David and I were outside Blair’s private office in Downing Street. Bernie remarked: ‘Just think, one minute you have all this, next minute you are queuing up at check-in like everyone else.’ He manifestly preferred great wealth to great power. I confessed I found politics far more interesting than wealth (given a certain amount, which I was lucky enough to have). You can do more in politics than you can with money unless, of course, you happen to be a UK newspaper proprietor with both power and wealth.

  In the meeting, we explained to Blair there was a move in the European Commission to bring in a ban on tobacco sponsorship in the EU. This did not pose any immediate threat to Formula One because the directive was flawed and would be struck down by the European Court (as it later was). However, this was, we said, the wrong approach. Tobacco sponsorship was certainly coming to an end but what was needed was a global agreement. Without it, races outside Europe would still have tobacco advertising that would be beamed to all EU countries on television. This would lead to myriad difficulties and could even interfere with Formula One’s TV coverage in the EU. Any attempt by the FIA itself to ban tobacco advertising in Formula One would immediately be challenged in the courts, almost certainly with success.

  We explained that neither Bernie nor the FIA had any reason to want tobacco sponsorship to continue. At worst, its loss would inconvenience some of the richer teams but we did want to avoid an EU ban conflicting with non-EU practice. We had a proposal to wean Formula One off tobacco on a voluntary basis quite quickly. As things turned out, had our plan been accepted in 1997, tobacco sponsorship would have stopped much sooner than it eventually did – but that’s another story.

  Blair immediately understood the legal reasons why the directive would fail and saw the sense in our proposals for a worldwide ban. Three days after the meeting, I bumped into Peter Mandelson at a Downing Street reception. I asked him if anything was happening. He replied in his characteristic way: ‘Whitehall is reverberating to the sound of crashing gears . . .’ I understood this to mean our suggestions were being taken seriously and British tactics at the EU were being changed.

  The £1 million story broke
on the day Michael Schumacher was appearing before the World Council accused of deliberately pushing Jacques Villeneuve off the track during the 1997 European Grand Prix at Jerez in Spain. Unusually, the council was meeting at the RAC Motor Sports Association offices in Colnbrook rather than Paris, where the meetings were normally held. Bernie and I shared a car to the meeting. When we arrived we found ourselves surrounded by press and TV cameras. We didn’t know what Downing Street had just announced, so things got even more complicated. In the resulting confusion our proposals to Blair got lost and the country was led to believe that Bernie had given Labour a large sum of money to preserve tobacco sponsorship in Formula One. It suited the Conservative opposition to promote this distortion and quietly forget that, when in power, they had always been more than friendly to the tobacco industry.

  We met with Blair’s advisers and various ministers but it proved impossible to get the true story out. Some years later, in April 2002, David managed to get a big feature in The Times setting the record straight, but the damage had long been done. After his initial donation, Labour had repeatedly approached Bernie to give more – a large sum each year until the next election. Foolishly, they then sought advice from Sir Patrick Neill, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as to whether they could accept further money from Bernie if it were forthcoming.

  Instead, they were shocked to be told to give back what they had already received. This advice was hugely unfair to Bernie, as it implied that there was something wrong with the original donation. Unfortunately, Blair’s people were new and very naive in those early days, complete innocents compared with the Conservatives, who had happily accepted massive sums from the tobacco industry. I always felt bad about the way Bernie was treated over the issue. He would never have given the money had I not urged him to do so. The then Labour government distorted the entire story in order to preserve its political position, and the fact that the party had pressured him to give yet more money was quietly forgotten, even denied. But for this episode, I think Bernie would have been offered a knighthood. He might well have refused but, given what he has done for his country, it should have been offered.