Happy birthday Mr E

[skeggysteve]

Bernie is 86 today.

He changed F1, made a lot of people very wealthy, made F1 a global sport and made F1 a lot safer.

OK, I agree F1 today is not perfect but I wonder how it would have turned out with Mr. E ?

So I for one will say happy birthday Mr. E

[Jasandjules]

Impressive mind and body for 86 - not a chap hobbling around with walking sticks, but hob nobbing with the powerful..

[Eric Mc]

Overstayed approximately 36 years too many, in my opinion.

[Adrian W]

Eric Mc said:

Overstayed approximately 36 years too many, in my opinion.

I wonder where F1 would be without him, or if we would still remember it.

[Eric Mc]

My hunch is that F1 would be alive and well - but very different.

And possibly not in its current state of decline.

[bobbo89]

Without him I think it'd be smaller and better for it. Less races, less money involved and more accessible to the fans.

[Eric Mc]

It's hard to say what direction it would have gone. Its popularity was rising inexorable as the 70s progressed and the epic Hunt/Lauda battle of 1976 really attracted the attention of TV - especially in the UK. It was at that point that some sort of "regularising" of the way it was operated needed to be hammered out.

Bernie was the first to recognise this and seized the opportunity. If he hadn't, I think somebody else would have sooner or later.

[anonymous-user]

Jasandjules said:

Impressive mind and body for 86 - not a chap hobbling around with walking sticks, but hob nobbing with the powerful..

You must be quite easily impressed..............

[jbudgie]

Got to agree with Eric Mc on this point.

[anonymous-user]

skeggysteve said:

Bernie is 86 today.

He changed F1, made a lot of people very wealthy, made F1 a global sport and made F1 a lot safer.

OK, I agree F1 today is not perfect but I wonder how it would have turned out with Mr. E ?

So I for one will say happy birthday Mr. E

What he did was change F1 from a Sport into a business.

[hairyben]

Eric Mc said:

It's hard to say what direction it would have gone. Its popularity was rising inexorable as the 70s progressed and the epic Hunt/Lauda battle of 1976 really attracted the attention of TV - especially in the UK. It was at that point that some sort of "regularising" of the way it was operated needed to be hammered out.

Bernie was the first to recognise this and seized the opportunity. If he hadn't, I think somebody else would have sooner or later.

Very much this.

F1 would have been monetized to some degree or other by bernie or someone else, the question that could be pondered is how different F1 could be had it not had such weak and corruptible stewardship in the guise of some of the power junkies in the FIA too impotent in leadership to temper him.

[Derek Smith]

skeggysteve said:

Bernie is 86 today.

He changed F1, made a lot of people very wealthy, made F1 a global sport and made F1 a lot safer.

OK, I agree F1 today is not perfect but I wonder how it would have turned out with Mr. E ?

So I for one will say happy birthday Mr. E

I'm with Eric. There's little to suggest that F1 wouldn't exist today if he hadn't been around. My main sport is rugby and they take a different view to all sorts of aspects of supporting the fans. It is fair to say that the organisation of rugby is far from perfect, at lest from a lower level point of view.

We'll never know what we would be watching if it hadn't been for him and his collusion with Mosley. I enjoyed the sport before he left Brabham as well as enjoying it since. I have no doubt that I would have enjoyed it any less.

I'm not sure how Ecclestone made it a lot safer. And it was a world championship before he was about.

[Eric Mc]

In the early days of Bernie's "stewardship" the governing body was FISA (rather than the FIA). Remember the "FISA-FOCA" wars?

The fact that the FIA ended up taking direct control of the regulation came about because of the back room deals cooked up by Bernie and Max and overall, I think the long term legacy of this arrangement is going to be bad.