Published>Thu, Oct 28 10 06:52 AM
Red Bull and the ever-cheeky Sebastian Vettel presented Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone with a walking frame, equipped with steering wheel and front wing, as an 80th birthday gift last weekend. The billionaire Briton, who will be reaching his milestone on Thursday with plenty of energy but not much in the way of a celebration, saw the joke.
On current form, there is about as much chance of Ecclestone needing the present as there is of Ferrari making affordable family runabouts or Lewis Hamilton deciding to pack it in to become a parking attendant.
The former second-hand car salesman, who turned Formula One from a sport for oil-streaked 'garagistes' into a billion-dollar glamour business, has no intention of giving up his globe-trotting, deal-making lifestyle for an armchair and slippers any time in the next decade.
"Retire? Why? I need the money, I can't afford to retire," the master of the throwaway quip said at Sunday's South Korean Grand Prix in Yeongam as he inspected the latest addition to his global circus. "I don't worry. Age is nothing. People make me laugh when they talk about one year to the next year," he added with a smile. One day you're one age and a day later you're another age. It's all nonsense. I'm like Obama, I like to move forward."
Ecclestone, a bespectacled Andy Warhol lookalike in pressed blue jeans and with the theme from the film 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' as his mobile ringtone, needs more money about as much as he needs the Zimmer frame.
As he has explained on countless occasions, it is a way of keeping the score more than anything, a means of measuring achievement rather than keeping the wolf at the door. In his London office, he has a sculpture of a pile of $100 bills.
NO SUCCESSOR
By any standards, he has been a success ? from selling buns at a mark-up to schoolmates to making his first fortune trading motorcycles in fuel-starved post-war Britain and then making a mint in Formula One. A natural dealmaker, with a softly-spoken manner that belies his Machiavellian streak, Ecclestone has a reputation for being uncompromising and almost obsessively neat, with the odd wisecrack thrown in.
One of the advantages of old age, he once suggested, was that the fear of life imprisonment was no longer what it was. The sport, with a record 20-race calendar lined up for next season and new races on the horizon in India, Russia and the United States, can thank his magic touch for keeping the money pipeline flowing.
Job done, Ecclestone usually leaves the circuit as soon as the grid walk is over and the race started. The concern, ever present for manufacturers and other stake-holders, is what happens when he is no longer there at all?
STRONG FUTURE
International Automobile Federation (FIA) president Jean Todt, another diminutive dynamo who replaced Ecclestone's long-term ally Max Mosley last year, brushed off any concern from the governing body's part.
"I must say it is extraordinary to see this guy, days before he is to be 80, how motivated, how switched on he can be," he said. "I really wish to be in the same situation at his age. It's fascinating.Bernie is a very smart guy. He has sold his company to (private equity firm) CVC, and in fact the responsibility of the future of Formula One is more to CVC than to Bernie," Todt said. "I am sure that Formula One has a very strong future."
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