Bernie’s wife is staying loyal to her man
GOOD girls love bad boys’ was the legend on the T-shirt of the beautiful Brazilian wife of the man whose fate is being decided 5,000 miles away across t he Atlantic Ocean.
Bernie and Fabiana Ecclestone strolled through the paddock here, where the biggest dramas were the fog that delayed first practice and the medical helicopter breakdown which caused a further delay. The real theatre, though, was unfolding at the High Court in London.
The court was told how, in 2001, Ecclestone paid £7million personally to team bosses Eddie Jordan, Alain Prost and Tom Walkinshaw to ‘ensure’ they signed the Concorde Agreement, the sport’s commercial and regulatory framework.
Stephen Mullens, an Ecclestone lieutenant, told the court he wondered if an ‘horrific’ robbery at his house was ‘orchestrated’ at Ecclestone’s behest because he (Mullens) sided with Slavica Ecclestone over her divorce proceedings.
‘ I t crossed my mind,’ said Mullens. ‘It also crossed my mind that a very large number of other people who I had dealings with may have been involved.’
“The real theatre was unfolding in High Court ”
Marshall asked Mullens whether he felt threatened by Ecclestone for assisting the then Mrs Ecclestone. ‘I don’t think Mr Ecclestone was entirely happy,’ he said.
Mrs Ecclestone offered Mullens £15m, which he accepted as a loan and put towards security at his house rather than flee abroad as he had planned.
The £100m l awsuit has been brought by communications company Constantin Medien, who claim F1 was sold below its market value to private equity firm CVC in 2006 with the help of a £27m bribe from Ecclestone to Gerhard Gribkowsky, who worked for German Bank BayernLB, a shareholder.
Constantin say they were deprived of a bonus they would have received had F1 been sold at a higher price. Ecclestone, 83, denies all of the allegations against him, including Mullens’s, and the case continues.
Even some of Ecclestone’s closest allies admit the case could have a serious impact on his role as chief executive of F1. The question is how employers CVC can tolerate their business being laid bare.
In other news, Fernando Alonso was fastest in first practice as the grand prix weekend began in bizarre circumstances as fog and a mechanical fault with the medical helicopter caused delays.
Despite the city of Austin bathed in sunshine in the early morning, the Circuit of the Americas — 10 miles away — was shrouded in fog.
FIA race director Charlie Whiting was forced to call a number of delays as the medical helicopter was unable to fly given the conditions. The run finally started after a 40- minute stoppage, with the session cut to an hour. However, after just 14 minutes of on-track action Whiting was forced to bring proceedings to a halt due to a message that read ‘further problems with the medical helicopter’.
That resulted in a further 34minute wait prior to the cars returning to the track to complete a session topped by Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari.
After being given the all-clear to race despite an issue with his back, Alonso was ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button by just 0.028secs.
Behind Button was Williams’ Valtteri Bottas as four-time champion Sebastian Vettel was down in 18th in his Red Bull, 2.3secs behind Alonso.
But with times largely irrelevant in opening sessions, Vettel will be unconcerned as he still completed 21 laps, doing a high-fuel run.