inside his fast and furious life Passionate: British billionaire Bernie Ecclestone. First get on, then get rich, then get honest. It's said to be one of Bernie Ecclestone's favourite quips. Possibly because it implies he's ticked off all three stages. Well, the diminutive, distinctive 82-year-old south Londoner who transformed motor racing, through his unique talent for no-holds-barred wheeling and dealing, certainly got on and clearly got rich. But a German judge is about to pass judgment on the third stage. Spectacle: Mark Webber drives around the Australian Grand Prix circuit at Albert Park in Melbourne. Ecclestone has faced crises before. Friends have died, rivals have threatened to take away everything he built, the tax man came sniffing for a bigger slice of his success. He took it all in his stride. But the inside of a German jail over an alleged $50 million bribe to a bank official could prove an ignominious end to his career. "If I get sent to jail ... I don't think I will like it very much," the man infamous for playing his cards close to his chest admitted to The Times recently. He has run formula one for more than three decades, taking it from a loose alliance of high-living amateurs and manufacturers to a commercial superpower. In the process he has made billions and befriended superstars, bought mansions, wooed models. Speed men: Bernie Ecclestone (left) and Ron Walker. Photo: John Donegan "I'm not sure what happiness is," he told The Times. His only apparent motivation is the next deal, the next negotiation, the next chance to outwit whoever stands between him and what he wants. He has spent his life on his grand passion, but he leaves grand prix races before the chequered flag to beat the traffic. "I don't like to be at the end of anything," he says. There are books written about the long, colourful life of Bernie Ecclestone. They start with a young kid, the son of a fisherman and a stern mother, born in a home without water on tap or an inside toilet, nearly blind in one eye, with the other watching dogfights over "Bomb Alley" in war-ravaged south London. Ferrari at the Melbourne Grand Prix. In his book No Angel, Tom Bower suggests Ecclestone's parents made a (literally) sweet profit on the black market during the war. Maybe through nature, maybe through nurture, the young Bernard showed an early instinct for profit. He started trading school milk and biscuits. He used money from two newspaper rounds to buy more biscuits and buns to sell in the schoolyard. He would even trade his toys, always trading up. In the garden shed he would tinker for hours with old motors. His two interests came together when the teenage Bernie entered the world of car and motorcycle dealing. "His brain was like a calculator," one rival dealer told Bower. London's second-hand car trade was shady. Everyone was out to make a quick profit, through dodgy means if necessary. Winding back odometers was just one of the most obvious tricks. But - at least the way people like to remember it - Ecclestone was a natural from the start. He was dubbed "the Whippet" for his speed in haggling - he learnt how to break another negotiator's will by pretending not to show any interest, by making an unexpected offer that sounded better than it was, then demanding an answer before cool heads could check the numbers. "Everything has a value but nobody really knows the value of anything," he boasted to Bower. I assess the price and then ask for it. His favourite technique: to stick by the letter of the deal, but screw people with the fine print. He once took revenge on a rival dealer by selling them a "Mercedes hard top" that turned out to be just the roof, not the rest of the convertible sports car. Even his close friends and associates learnt quickly that if you bought a car from Bernie, it would turn up without the radio. Racing driver Niki Lauda later described Ecclestone's haggling style with a mixture of admiration and frustration. He used "any excuse, any half-truth to give a new twist to the conversation. He'll argue that black is white and two plus two equals five - or vice versa - whatever comes into his head ... He twists and turns to such a degree that there is no thread running through his conversation that you can grasp. However, immediately you have reached an agreement with him, you can be sure that the deal is cast iron. Ecclestone's two passions outside business were racing and gambling. He loved gambling for the cut and thrust, the risk and reward - and the opportunity to meet influential friends with similar interests. In one anecdote, he literally bet on two flies crawling up the wall of London's Crockfords casino. But Ecclestone's early passion for racing was tainted by crashes involving friends, then consumed by business. He planned a "major assault" on formula one, he revealed to a journalist in 1972, "to compete with the best in the world championship by producing the best cars and bikes and attracting lucrative sponsorship." As a team owner (initially of Brabham, after a typically ruthless deal), he was not going to put up with the state of the sport. Bower explains that most other team owners, especially the British "garagistes," were about "high living and the thrill of competition" - they loved the glamorous lifestyle, jetting to Monaco to party with the rich and famous, and they didn't seem to care they were being paid a pittance by race organisers. Ecclestone, naturally, wanted a better deal. Ecclestone's gradual, relentless takeover of the sport is a full 78-lap nail-biter studded with chicanery. He ended up the sport's uncontested supremo, taking most of the profits into his private companies, negotiating with politicians, sponsors and broadcasters, manufacturers, teams and regulators to make those profits ever more satisfying. He used every trick in the book. He would suggest to opponents in a negotiation that they take a break, then rifle through the rubbish bins to read the notes they had been passing. He would divide and conquer. He would lie and bluster. "Ecclestone was not a far-sighted strategist motivated by precise vision of an empire," Bower wrote. [He was] a tactician protecting a healthy income. But to say Ecclestone tricked his way to the top would not be the whole story. As he told The Guardian in 1999, "I've got big balls. I'll put up the $100 million or whatever it takes to get a project off the ground. Then, when I've made a success of it, other people look at it and they say 'I could have done that'. But of course they didn't. He has enemies, but he also has allies. "I think the criticism of Bernie comes from people who'd like the sport to stand still and not get bigger," Walter Hayes, former director of Ford's motor sport program, told The Guardian. People forget he's created one of the most significant industries in Britain. More than once he financially guaranteed the return from a loss-making race, in order to keep teams happy and keep his alliances and deals solid. And it was those alliances, and those deals, and the trust he engendered, that gave him the edge in key battles with rival formula one interests. He is an old-fashioned, my-handshake-is-my-word operator. Melbourne's Grand Prix, which continues to attract controversy over whether it is value for money, is dependent on the close friendship between Victorian major events supremo Ron Walker and Ecclestone. "The only person I deal with is Ron Walker," Ecclestone declared in February, in an apparent snub to the state government that subsidises the race, when he touted that he was prepared to give Melbourne a 50-year deal. Last year, in an interview with Sky, he lamented the end of those days of handshake deals. Millions and millions of deals throughout the world are not being done because of lawyers. Whereas before we used to be able to scribble things down on the back of an envelope. Christian Sylt, editor of the sport's trade guide Formula Money, says the personal "guarantee" that Ecclestone represents has made formula one unimaginable without him. "Not a financial guarantor, a general guarantor across the board," Sylt says. There are many people and companies and countries that are involved in F1 that are only there because [Ecclestone] has said, 'Don't worry, trust me, you will get what you want out of it'. And they do. It's not underhand, it's the fact that he understands where they're coming from. He tells them 'I know what you want, I can make sure you achieve that', be it exposure for a country or a brand. There's such an element of trust in him that many participants in the sport would leave when he does. Which is not to say he's easy to deal with, or that the deal you end up with is the one you want. Melbourne's relationship with the Formula One Grand Prix is the perfect case in point. Even official figures show taxpayers subsidised losses worth $50.67 million for the latest F1 event. Ecclestone demands a hefty licence fee and has sewn up global TV rights, marketing rights - anything that he could take off the table - leaving host cities struggling to make up the losses with gate takings. Victoria spends almost half its tourism budget on this single, noisy event, by some reports. Nevertheless, the Victorian government (which when the Coalition was in opposition had questioned whether it was value for money) is chasing a new contract, now believing the race is worth the price as a world-standard tourist attraction. And once again they are negotiating with Ecclestone. "We're dealing with him ... because that's the structure of the organisation," Tourism Minister Louise Asher says. Well, for now, anyway. It's not just the march of time that could change the game - it's serious legal trouble. As Sylt explains it, in 2006 a German bank sold its 47 per cent stake in formula one to the current owner, an investment fund. A man named Gerhard Gribkowsky, who was handling the sale on behalf of the bank, received about $44 million after the sale, allegedly from Ecclestone and his "Bambino" offshore family trust. Bambino, set up in the 1990s, holds an estimated £3 billion - the fortune Ecclestone made from formula one's commercial rights. It was registered in the name of his Croatian wife (now his former wife). German authorities had found out about the payment, and their initial concern was tax evasion by Gribkowsky. But in 2011 Ecclestone found himself in a German court, explaining why he made the payment. He claimed Gribkowsky had been trying to shake him down, and he paid the money to stop Gribkowsky telling tax authorities that Ecclestone was still in control of his family trust. It could have cost Ecclestone billions in tax. So he paid the bank man. I thought it might keep him quiet and peaceful and friendly and stop him doing silly things. Gribkowsky is now serving a jail sentence after being found guilty of tax evasion and bribery. In June, Ecclestone was indicted on bribery charges, and a judge will soon decide if the evidence is strong enough for a trial. According to Sylt, in the 256-page indictment prosecutors argue that Gribkowsky did not present a real threat to Ecclestone because he lacked proof of his authority over the family trust. Instead, the prosecutors claim the money was a bribe, paid to ensure the deal went through and he would be retained as F1's chief executive. They go back over Ecclestone's colourful life to show he has always manoeuvred to put himself in control of the sport. Sylt believes this theory "is essentially nonsense" and is unlikely to put Ecclestone in prison. "But the bottom line is if anybody ends up in court there's a chance things will not go in their favour, that's been proven time and time again," he says. I think the real risk for Ecclestone is if it goes to trial. The case against the German banker took eight months; you'd have to imagine the case against Ecclestone will take at least as long. Gribkowsky was in court for a lot of that time. It would be very difficult to run a company such as formula one if Ecclestone was in court every day. The problem could be that it will make it difficult for him to continue his job. Pondering the consequences for the sport without its supremo has Sylt momentarily speechless. Huge. Massive," he says. Ecclestone has named no successor. Sylt says he just doesn't think that way. His viewpoint is not the next 10, 20 years of sport. It's the next six months to a year. A successor is a distraction, not relevant to him. The new major stakeholders in F1 are said to have a succession plan, a list of possible replacements, "but nobody has a clue what it is," Sylt says. But if Ecclestone successfully shakes off these charges, don't expect him to change his ways, to start thinking about his legacy or mortality. "With Bernie, what you see is what you get," Sylt says. He's immensely sharp, he will use anything to his advantage. He is a businessman, a wheeler and dealer. Pretty much the whole time he's focused on business. He's certainly passionate about what he does, and he's managed over such a long period of time to cut out any unnecessary distractions from his life, that he's got down to a fine art doing what he does. Or, in Ecclestone's own words, to The Times in June: "I just hope that I die of a heart attack. Preferably at my desk.