Two Men, Who Reshaped the F1 into the Sport, We Know it Today

Lotus and Colin Chapman

It's been a long time since Lotus and its founder, Colin Chapman, raced in F1. Most fans have no idea how much impact they had on the sport, which is a shame. Because it would be an exaggeration to say that without Chapman, F1 would have been about as famous as regional carting races. Here is why...

Back in 50s and 60s F1 was but a gentlemen's pastime. A somewhat well-off people with passion for racing would buy a racing car and enter the sport as a private team. McLaren and Brabham all begun this way and there were many more like them. It was a rule, not an exception. If anything, Ferrari that hired races like modern teams do was an exception. There was no big money, huge R&D departments staffed with countless top of the class engineers, wind tunnels, motorhomes, multimillion deals and such. Just a bunch of enthusiasts with enough money to afford a car and to travel around the globe with it. Some of this spirit still lives in F1, that is why racers who started out in carting like Verstappen and Leclerc still do well in this sport.

The man who changed it all was Colin Chapman, and he did it used tobacco money. Back in the days governments of various countries were cracking down on tobacco advertisement. A multi-billion industry was deprived of conventional ways to promote its products like billboards, TV commercials and such. The law however did not say anything about less conventional ones, like an F1 car for example. Colin Chapman figured this and made a first in sport sponsorship deal to paint his car in Golden Leaf cigarette livery. First race in Silverstone went badly for the deal as authorities insisted he remove the livery as it violated the law. However, F1 is an international event and tobacco advertisement laws vary from country to country, what was a violation in UK was still OK elsewhere back them. What's more the races in these foreign countries would still be broadcasted on British television and British public will stare for 2 hours straight on his "moving billboards", coloured in Golden Leaf livery. Big tobacco companies like Phillip Morris and BAT were willing to pay nearly any money to use this advertisement loophole and Colin Chapman together with other F1 bosses fully exploited this golden opportunity. This influx of easy tobacco money eventually turned F1 into the super expensive event we know today.

However, Colin Chapman was not just a shrewd businessman who wanted to become a richest man in the world. At heart he was an engineer and he used this newly found tobacco fortune to fully indulge his engineering passion. Gone were the days of using of the shelf technology, tobacco money could afford Chapman and other engineers all sorts of rare materials and even rocket technology used in space programs. Rocket fuel, expensive lightweight alloys, complex electronics, computer tech. F1 became the hotbed of all sorts of technological innovations. Chapman himself is most famous for his ground effect cars, but he invented other things too, like a monocoque body and sturts.

Colin Chapman was not the only innovator in the sport; he inspired many other people with passion for engineering to join F1 and use the tobacco money to invent all sorts of advance technologies. Above mentioned Adrian Newey, Paul Bernard, Nick Fry, Patrick Head, Harvey Pothelwhite and many others followed in his footsteps and used the generous tobacco money to innovate and build ever so faster and advance F1 cars that have become almost rocket ships on wheels. Some of these innovations later made their way into road cars as well.

Colin Chapman and his Lotus team are forgotten heroes who had more impact on F1 and even the broader world as we know it than many people realise.

Brabham and Bernie Ecclestone

Most people familiar with F1 do know who Bernie Ecclestone is. Now retired F1 Supremo is known for being greedy and unscrupulous in finding and signing new tracks for F1, extracting huge sums of money from track owners for a chance to host F1 while completely ignoring any ethical considerations or reputation of said owners. Few however know how Bernie came to be this way.

Before becoming F1 Supremo, Bernie tried to be a racer and then for a long time owned a team and run it successfully, winning titles and even innovating technologically. Bernie was contemporary of Colin Chapman, see above photo of them together and saw F1 for almost the entirety of its history. 

Bernie and other team owners saw how much money track owners make from selling tickets and broadcasting rights while at the same time also charging teams for using the track to race thought its unfair. There were other grievances too, like conditions of some tracks, abysmal safety and poor conduct of organisers and track owners. Eventually not just him but also other team owners got fed up with this unfair state of affairs and decided to act. They formed FOCA to claim broadcasting rights and to begin charging track owners for hosting the F1 like it is nowadays. Resistance to this change was stiff and it was up to Ecclestone to navigate these turbulent times and get people to accept the change.

Thanks to Bernie, the FOCA revolution succeeded but it also created the new role of F1's boss who will negotiate contracts on behalf of the teams and the F1 itself, later dubbed F1 Supremo. Bernie took the role, but doing so meant that he had to sell his team, Brabham, to someone else to avoid conflict of interests. Alas Brabham did not last too long under the new management. It was a sacrifice for the future of F1 itself that Bernie made.

Using FOCA, Ecclestone essentially glued together various disparate parts that together made F1 and packaged it into a single legal and organisational entity. Bernie was the go-to man if you wanted anything with F1, like hosting or participating. The organisation he created was eventually sold to Liberty Media as a complete ready to use package. Without Ecclestone's efforts there would have been nothing to sell at all.

Bernie also contributed to solving F1's financial problems. Sure, at the time of FOCA creation the biggest source of money in F1 were tobacco sponsors so it was not a big issue. However, in 2005, when governments got their act together and figured how to close the advertisement loophole, F1 lost tobacco money as tobacco sponsors left. For big tobacco it was all about advertisement and ability to paint cars in liveries of their cigarette brands. This "Black Day of F1" would have been much darker without sound business model, Bernie and FOCA have created, it allowed the sport to continue without devolving back to its carting roots.

Later in life Bernie would sometimes get into disagreement with team bosses and many other people. Ethics scandals, friendship with "worst people" like Flavio Briatore and such would gradually tarnish Bernie's image. People would gradually begin to view him as an evil boss of F1. That was not always the case, however. Bernie is a man who loves F1 and did a lot for the sport. Without him it would not be the glamorous ultra expensive event we know and love it.

Conclusion

Both Colin Chapman and Bernie Ecclestone are the titans who build the F1 from a rich gentlemen pastime into the most expensive and glamorous sport on the planet. They deserve more credit than they get. Understanding them and what they done is essential to understanding what F1 is and how it came to be this way.