MOGI GUACU, BRAZIL – MAY 15: Bernie Ecclestone and his wife Fabiana Flosi during a visit to the … [+]
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The 2022 Formula 1 season is fully prepared, Red Bull’s formidable Max Verstappen has reclaimed his drivers’ championship, but the Brazilian Grand Prix on November 13 in Sao Paolo gives us the chance to meet the effervescent icon and former “F1 Supremo” Bernard Charles “Bernie” Ecclestone, a 92 hale, who attended the race and its preparation in Sao Paolo with his Brazilian wife, the vice president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and ambassador for South America, Fabiana Flosi Ecclestone.
That Mr. Ecclestone has led a long and colorful life, even within the confines of what an ordinary mortal billionaire other than Bernie as “retirement” might approximate, is a fact. But in Ecclestone’s case, the definition of all that quiet phase of nonagenarian life is more than just different.
Compared to 2016-7, when Mr. Ecclestone sold his Delta Topco shares to Liberty Media (Delta Topco is the parent company in the Ecclestone structure that controlled Formula 1), he is not prominently featured on the front page of the world sports pages, so his 2022 has understandably been quieter than the last quarter of his reign as “F1 Supreme”. But that does not mean that things have been quiet.
Naturally, the formidable Mrs. Flosi Ecclestone figures prominently in this phase of her life, and at the pace of the pandemic over the past two years, the couple have withdrawn like many to their more rural estates. The result is that Mr. and Mrs. Ecclestone have spent much of the past two years on their 500-acre coffee plantation, Fazenda Ycatu, which roughly translates to “Farm of Abundant Water,” named for the many mineral springs in the undulating foothills of the Sierra de Cantareira mountains.
It is a natural move, to restore an old coffee plantation in the rural municipality of the Amparo region. The entire state of Sao Paolo, to which Ecclestones’ Fazenda Ycatu belongs, is a traditional stronghold of 19th-century Brazilian coffee, justly known for its silky, low-acid brew. The coffee economy kick-started the multicultural powerhouse of Sao Paolo, the city and state we know today, drawing immigrants from around the world. Like many branches of agriculture, Brazilian coffee collapsed during the Great Depression, and by 1930, many Sao Paolo plantations had disappeared. Such was the case of Amparo and its district, where the Ecclestones bought Fazenda Ycatu in 2012.
Not being idle people, Mr. and Mrs. Ecclestone have invested heavily in restoring arable land and state-of-the-art drying and processing equipment. It’s also one of the main places the couple took refuge during the pandemic, and these two years on the farm gave the Ecclestones the opportunity to hone their production and marketing. The Ecclestones have been very successfully marketing their “Celebrity Coffee” brand for a decade.
In fact, the brand has won regional and national awards and is very popular in Sao Paolo and southeastern Brazil, whose success has led the Ecclestone farm to become one of the main producers reviving local artisan coffee production in the whole region. Ecclestone’s farm in Amparo is a short 90-mile helicopter ride from Sao Paolo (helicopters are Ecclestone’s preferred mode of local transportation, given Brazil’s challenging rural highway system), hence the background presence of the former F1 Supremo at the Sao Paolo Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Once a motorhead, always a motorhead, would be the obvious reason for the appearance. But in the special case of Ecclestone, having been a driver in the 1950s, a team owner and builder in the 1980s, and a fundamental architect of the sport itself, having basically invented its television licences, which, over the last 40 years, catapulted the international road show to unprecedented heights of popularity, is encoded so deeply within its DNA helix that an F1 event taking place anywhere in the world without Ecclestone performing at least one flyby on the paddock was previously unthinkable. But the fact is that the tycoon has sold his baby, so his appearances are now only occasional, taking on a certain lion aspect in winter.
If he hones in on some detail you don’t like, he may or may not bring his trademark Suffolk commercial fisherman’s son grumpiness out of his well-worn scabbard, but whatever sword rattling is made is done from an emeritus point of view. and should be read through that filter. It’s an obvious fact, but it changes things: he is no longer the “F1 Supreme” sitting down. Which is not to say that Mr. Ecclestone’s blade found a target earlier this month, nor that his appearance was anything but pleasant.
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – NOVEMBER 11: Bernie Ecclestone of Great Britain and FOM during practice for the … [+]
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But it’s clear that his bite hasn’t left him. In late June, with the F1 season in full swing, Ecclestone sat down for a televised interview with the immensely popular Good Morning Britain morning talk, in which he claimed that Vladimir Putin was a “first class” person and that Putin delivered precisely what he promised when Formula 1 brought the race to Russia under Ecclestone’s watch in 2014. With his characteristically morose manner, Ecclestone opined that he would “still take a bullet for it. He would rather he didn’t hurt me, but if he did, he’d still take a bullet, because he’s a first-class person.”
The setback was global, instantaneous, and severe. While it can hardly be argued that the statement was a classic Ecclestone off-the-cuff speech, and that Ecclestone in fact also pointed out that Putin had made a mistake, it did not read with any sort of indulgent undertone. On the contrary. The episode only added to the Klieg lights on Ecclestone’s miscalculation: his gross failure to acknowledge the daily reality of the Ukrainian war. For its part, Formula 1 immediately sought to distance itself from its emeritus, and no less than a racing icon like champion driver Lewis Hamilton was moved to say: “We don’t need any more of that, to listen to someone who believes in the war, the displacement of people and the killing of people, and the support [Putin] It’s beyond me.” A week later, Ecclestone issued an apology and the topic disappeared from the news cycle.
All too casual impromptu forays into hot geopolitical debates aside, perhaps the ultimate proof of Ecclestone’s retirement without retirement is the fact that Celebrity Coffee is now a supplier to Formula 1.
Source: news.google.com