Thomas Ecclestone Popular Books

Thomas Ecclestone Biography & Facts

Bernard Charles Ecclestone (born 28 October 1930) is a British former business magnate. He is the former chief executive of the Formula One Group, which manages Formula One motor racing and controls the commercial rights to the sport. As such, he was commonly described in journalism as the 'F1 Supremo'. Ecclestone began his career as a racing driver and entered two Grand Prix races during the 1958 season, but failed to qualify for either of them. Later, he became manager of drivers Stuart Lewis-Evans and Jochen Rindt. In 1972, he bought the Brabham team, which he ran for 15 years. As a team owner he became a member of the Formula One Constructors Association. His control of the sport, which grew from his pioneering sale of the television rights in the late 1970s, was chiefly financial; under the terms of the Concorde Agreement, Ecclestone and his companies also controlled the administration, setup and logistics of each Grand Prix, thus making him one of the richest men in the United Kingdom. Ecclestone was replaced by Chase Carey as chief executive of the Formula One Group in 2017. He was subsequently appointed as chairman emeritus and acted as an adviser to the board. Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore also owned the English football club Queens Park Rangers between 2007 and 2011. In October 2023, Ecclestone was convicted of tax fraud by false representation, and had to pay HM Revenue and Customs nearly £653m in back tax and penalties. He was sentenced to 17 months in prison, suspended for two years. Early life Ecclestone was born on 28 October 1930 in St Peter, South Elmham, a hamlet three miles south of Bungay. He was the son of Sidney Ecclestone, a fisherman, whose family was originally from Kent, and his wife Bertha Sophia (née Westley). Ecclestone attended primary school in Wissett in Suffolk before the family moved to Danson Road, Bexleyheath, southeast London, in 1938. He was not evacuated to the countryside during the Second World War and remained with his family. Ecclestone left Dartford West Central Secondary School at the age of 16 to work as an assistant in the chemical laboratory at the local gasworks testing gas purity. He also studied chemistry at Woolwich Polytechnic and pursued his hobby of motorcycles. Motorsports career Early career Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Ecclestone went into business trading in spare parts for motorcycles, and formed the Compton & Ecclestone motorcycle dealership with Fred Compton. His first racing experience came in 1949 in the 500cc Formula 3 Series, acquiring a Cooper Mk V in 1951. He drove only a limited number of races, mainly at his local circuit, Brands Hatch, but achieved a number of good placings and an occasional win. He initially retired from racing following several accidents at Brands Hatch, intending to focus on his business interests. Team ownership After his accident, Ecclestone temporarily left racing to make a number of eventually lucrative investments in property and loan financing and to manage the Weekend Car Auctions firm. He returned to racing in 1957 as manager of driver Stuart Lewis-Evans, and purchased two chassis from the disbanded Connaught Formula One team. Ecclestone even tried, unsuccessfully, to qualify a car himself at Monaco in 1958, although this has since been described as "not a serious attempt". He also entered the British Grand Prix, but the car was raced by Jack Fairman. He continued to manage Lewis-Evans when he moved to the Vanwall team; Roy Salvadori moved on to manage the Cooper team. Lewis-Evans suffered severe burns when his engine exploded at the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix and died six days later; Ecclestone was shocked and once again retired from racing. His friendship with Salvadori led to his becoming manager of driver Jochen Rindt and a partial owner of Rindt's 1970 Lotus Formula 2 team, whose other driver was Graham Hill. Rindt, on his way to the 1970 World Championship, died in a crash at the Monza circuit, though he was awarded the championship posthumously. Brabham During the 1971 season, Ecclestone was approached by Ron Tauranac, owner of the Brabham team, who was looking for a suitable business partner. Ecclestone made him an offer of £100,000 for the whole team, which Tauranac eventually accepted. Tauranac stayed on as designer and to run the factory, while Colin Seeley was briefly brought in against Tauranac's wishes to assist in design and management. Ecclestone and Tauranac were both dominant personalities and Tauranac left Brabham early in the 1972 season. The team achieved little during 1972, as Ecclestone moulded the team to fit his vision of a Formula One team. He abandoned the highly successful customer car production business established by Jack Brabham and Tauranac – reasoning that to compete at the very front in Formula One you must concentrate all of your resources there. For the 1973 season, Ecclestone promoted Gordon Murray to chief designer. The young South African produced the triangular cross-section BT42, the first of a series of Ford-powered cars with which the Brabham team would take several victories in 1974 and 1975 with Carlos Reutemann and Carlos Pace. Despite the increasing success of Murray's nimble Ford-powered cars, Ecclestone signed a deal with Alfa Romeo to use its powerful but heavy flat-12 engine from the 1976 season. Although this was financially beneficial, the new BT45s were unreliable and the Alfa engines rendered them significantly overweight. The 1976 and 1977 seasons saw Brabham fall towards the back of the field again, before winning two races again in the 1978 season when Ecclestone signed the Austrian double world champion Niki Lauda, intrigued by Murray's radical BT46 design. The Brabham-Alfa era ended in 1979, the team's first season with the up-and-coming young Brazilian Nelson Piquet when Alfa Romeo started testing its own Formula One car during that season. This prompted Ecclestone to revert to Cosworth DFV engines – a move Murray described as "like having a holiday". Piquet formed a close and long-lasting relationship with Ecclestone and the team, losing the title after a narrow battle with Alan Jones in 1980 and eventually winning in 1981 and 1983. In the summer of 1981 Brabham had tested a car powered by a BMW turbo engine, and 1982's new BT50 was powered by BMW's turbocharged four-cylinder M10. Brabham continued to run the Ford-powered BT49D in the early part of the season while reliability and driveability issues were sorted out by BMW and its technical partner Bosch. Ecclestone and BMW came close to splitting before the turbo car duly took its first win at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix but the partnership took the first turbo-powered world championship in 1983. The team continued to be competitive until 1985. At the end of the year, Piquet left after seven years. He was unhappy with the money that Ecclestone was willing to offer him and went to Williams where he would win his third .... Discover the Thomas Ecclestone popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thomas Ecclestone books.