“Briatore’s chequered history, rarely discussed and even less frequently revealed through interviews, suggested a past that he wished to forget and explained why the here-and-now and the future mattered to him so much more” — Timothy Collings, The Piranha Club.
Signor Flavio Briatore takes a sip from his espresso and glances at the scrum of television cameras and photographers piled outside the door. It is Sunday morning at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona and His Majesty Juan Carlos, King of Spain, is expected any moment at the Renault team’s motorhome.
The weekend has been kind to Signor Briatore and his team. His world champion, Fernando Alonso, has set the fastest time in qualifying and will start from pole position. Giancarlo Fisichella, the other Renault driver, will join Alonso on the front row of the grid. With three hours to go before the start of the race, the pressure is starting to build.
“Get Fernando, presto,” the team’s communications manager, Patrizia Spinelli, screams. “Where’s Giancarlo?” she demands. “Flavio, he’s coming!” But not for Briatore, who calmly finishes his espresso before joining his drivers. A swarm of hefty bodyguards pile through the door. The king is escorted across the paddock by Bernie Ecclestone. As he enters the Renault motorhome, Briatore reaches for his mobile phone and decides to make a call.
The bodyguards cannot quite believe what they are seeing and are twitching uneasily. “What’s Briatore playing at? He is about to be introduced to the King of Spain! This is an insult! Shouldn’t he be showing some respect?” But the Renault team director still has the phone to his ear when Juan Carlos extends his hand.
Briatore leans across and whispers conspiratorially into the royal ear. A second later, he hands the king his phone and invites him to say hello to the person he has dialled. A brief exchange ensues and the two men chuckle heartily, conversing in Italian before they pose for photos with the drivers.
“Who did you call, Flavio?” I ask later.
“Someone we both know,” he replies. “A friend.”
“Does your friend have a name?” “He’s just a friend,” Briatore says, fixing me with a gaze that invites me not to persist.
THERE was Mass before school every morning at the Episcopal college in Montaldo di Mondovi, a small town to the south of Turin in the mountains of Piedmont. Flavio did not care too much for the mountains. Flavio did not care too much for Mondovi. Flavio did not care too much for the college or its Mass or its priests, but thought it wise to pray, because even then, at the age of 13, he had a vision of the Promised Land.
He prayed for proper-fitting shoes.
Ave Maria, Piena di grazia, Il signore e’ tecco.
Tu sei benedetta fra la donne, E benedetto e il fruto del ventre tuo, Gesu.
He prayed for a fancy house and a car and winters without snow.
Padre nostro che sei nei cieli, Sia santificato il tuo nome; Venga il tuo regno, Sia fatta la tua volanta, Come in cielo cosi in terra.
He prayed for money and fame and a starring role in life, like the actor driving the chariot in the latest film from Hollywood. “For me it was quite simple,” he explains. “You only have one life. It’s like a movie, and you are part of the movie, and if you are a part of the movie, it’s better to play the protagonist. When you watch Ben-Hur you don’t notice the guy running behind the chariot, you see Ben-Hur, and I wanted to play Ben-Hur, not the guy that people saw running behind the chariot for two seconds.
“I come from a family of teachers; my father, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother, my sister were all teachers, and my father would love it if I am a teacher as well. I didn’t want to be a teacher. I didn’t want to be a fireman. The teacher’s salary was not good, money was always tight. Every time my father bought me a pair of shoes they were always two sizes too big for me because I’d grow into them. I hated that. I really hated that. I wanted to make money. I wanted to be the star.”
BRIATORE steps from the motorhome and crosses the paddock with his thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. Pretty girls stop him with requests for his autograph and photographers take pictures. His stride is graceful. It is the walk of a star. At a glance, with his team-issue shirt and his team-issue jeans and his team-issue shoes, it would be easy to mistake him for any member of the team, but, as with his life, little is exactly as it appears.
His team-issue shirt, for example, is not in fact team-issue but has been hand-crafted by the London-based designer Angelo Galasso. His belt is blue crocodile, his jeans are Billionaire Couture and a close examination of his team-issue Pumas reveals not the chunky model worn by the pit crew and management, but a much trendier shoe worn exclusively by Briatore.
Beneath the collar of his long-sleeved shirt (he detests short sleeves) a black diamond necklace nestles in the fine grey hairs of his splendidly bronzed chest. His wrists are adorned with trinkets not found on the common man. The silver bracelet on his left wrist was a present from Mohamed al-Fayed; the gold-plated bangle on his right was a gift from a girlfriend; but most curious of all is the thin, red cloth band he recently acquired in Brazil.
“When a girl puts that on you,” he explains, “you make a wish and wait for it to tear by itself. It’s bad luck to cut it off.”
“So what did you wish for?” I ask.
“That’s private,” he says.
“Oh, come on,” I press. “What can a man who has everything possibly wish for?” “Good health,” he says.
Briatore enters the garage and pauses for a word with Pat Symonds, the engineering director, and Bob Bell, the technical director. He is spotted by a section of the crowd who chant his name and start waving. Most are women. They want to ride on the chariot with Ben-Hur. “You’re 56 and your girlfriends keep getting younger. How do I explain this?” “I don’t know,” he replies. “I don’t really understand, but it’s nice, no?” “Do you believe in love?”
“Absolutely, it’s a fundamental part of anybody’s life.”
“So the concept of commitment to one person doesn’t frighten you?” “No, it makes sense. I change because I haven’t found the right person to commit to; this is the reason why. If it’s not the right person, I stop. I don’t waste my time. I think love and business are the same, you don’t want to waste any time.”
“You were married once?” “Yes, but not for so long.”
“What happened?” “I don’t know, it’s something I always ask myself, and, really, it was a mistake.”
“And now it’s strictly supermodels?” “Yeah . . . I mean . . . I don’t start a relationship for publicity or because it’s a supermodel. Every time I start a relationship with girls I believe it’s important and that it has a future, but after, if I feel it has no future, I stop. I don’t waste my time lying to people.”
“You used to smoke?” “Yes, but I stopped.”
“When?” “About three years now.”
“Why?” “Because there was no future in it,” he says, smiling.
“Are you afraid of dying?” “No, I’m afraid to be sick.”
“Do you still believe in God?” “Yeah.”
“You do?” “I believe in something.”
“So what happens when Judgment Day arrives and you are asked to account for your sins?” “I’ll use my credits.”
“Your credits?” “Yes,” he smiles, “all those times I went to Mass in the college.”
SINCE 1988, when a successful partnership with Benetton in the US made Briatore a very wealthy man, much has been written about his taste for the high life and his shrewd business brain. His estate in Kenya, his yacht Force Blue, his restaurant in London, his nightclubs in Sardinia, his designer stores, his racing drivers, his racing team, his supermodel friends. But the formative years of his business life remain something of a puzzle.
In an interview he gave to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica last year, the portrait presented was of a restless young man who left home in Montaldo di Mondovi to find fortune in Milan, but who wound up on the wrong side of the tracks before his career took off with Benetton.
“They called him the ‘tribula’, which in Piedmont’s dialect is someone who never sits still, gets into everywhere, does all he can in half-light in order to get to where he wants. ‘In a village there’s a nickname for everyone. I was saddled with mine when I worked in a restaurant in San Giacomo di Roburent. I kept busy, I was restless . . . I was a “tribula”, yes’.
“He wanted to escape: Cuneo, Milan. He wanted women. He wanted to have fun. He wanted money. This ‘tribula’ got in with the wrong crowd . . .
“A question of location? ‘It is my story, I am not hiding it. I was young and I made a mistake, an accident on the
track that was useful in making me shrewd. Nobody’s perfect, that’s the beauty of life’.”
Briatore did not mention the “mistake” when interviewed in Spain (Spinelli explained it as a gambling incident) but spoke instead of his early days as a ski instructor: “There was two or three metres of snow every winter and I became a good skier only because I had to ski all the time, but I didn’t really like it.”
. . . his skill as an insurance salesman: “Everybody in Italy was selling insurance. It was an easy way to make money; you didn’t need any background, you just had to talk nice, and I was fantastic at that. The company wanted to keep me because I was considered one of the best, but I just felt it was not my job.”
. . . and his first meeting with Luciano Benetton at the stock exchange in Milan: “I’ve had two or three people in my life who were very important to me. The first was Luciano Benetton. Luciano was a genius; if you look at the Benetton company now — the clothing represents just 5% — it’s one of the wealthiest companies in Europe. I’ve also learnt a lot from Bernie (Ecclestone). Bernie is a genius. He doesn’t look in the little garden all the time or in the little garage. He’s like Luciano, he has vision.”
In November 1988 Benetton invited Briatore to the Australian Grand Prix with a vision that his protégé would run his Formula One team. Briatore had never been to a grand prix before and remembers feeling underwhelmed. “I didn’t understand why Luciano wanted to put so much money in this stuff; for me it made no sense.”
He is still not quite sure why he decided to take the job, but it was not long before his appointment was causing ripples. “I arrived with no title,” he says. “I was a friend of Luciano Benetton, this was my title, but I figured out pretty much immediately that we could succeed. Luciano started laughing. I said, ‘No, Luciano, you don’t understand. These people still live in the past’.
“It was a club. Everything was technical. Everybody was talking about pistons and exhausts and suspensions. We had this enormous exposure to the public and nobody was using it. I told Luciano, ‘This is great for us to market because we’re different, we’re T-shirt-makers and in the middle of all this technology I believe we have something to say’.
“I’d go to meeting after meeting (with the other team principals) and never get any consideration. It was like, ‘This guy was never a mechanic, he doesn’t understand’. Every meeting was the same. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t understand’. I told them, ‘What I don’t understand is why we need to spend so much money for the pleasure of engineering. That I don’t understand’.”
In October 1989 Alessandro Nannini brought Briatore his first win — and only the second in Benetton’s history — at the Japanese Grand Prix. The taste of victory in sport and the roar of the crowd was a new experience for Briatore and he was soon thirsting for more. In 1991 he snatched a young Michael Schumacher from under Eddie Jordan’s nose — the first in a series of seemingly ruthless moves that would secure the team’s first world title three years later.
“You’re a winner,” I suggest.
“Yes,” he concurs.
“At most things in life, you’ve won?” “Well, I’m not a good loser, put it that way.”
“Are you a ruthless man? Do you believe in winning at all costs?” “What I believe is quite simple. Whatever job you are doing, you need to love — this is fundamental, and after that you need to understand the key people travelling with you in this adventure.
You need to know that they are suited to the job you have given them and that they will do it 100%.
“The moment you feel you are getting 75% is the moment you need to make changes. You need to act like a surgeon, cutting the cancer immediately, not wondering that if you give him some medicine he might get better.”
“So you’ve done some cutting in your time?” “Yes, I suppose, but I still have some people with me from the beginning. I have my way of managing, that’s for sure, but without my way I don’t think we would win the championship.”
“You mentioned loving what you are doing. How long did it take for you to love Formula One?” “I don’t love Formula One. I love the job I am doing, I love the product I am producing, I love the people I am working with; this is my job.”
“But you obviously love it more now than you did in 1989?” “I don’t think so,” he replies. “I think you are more involved, put it this way, but I don’t eat and breathe Formula One. I have different interests in life . . . Nightclub, restaurant, clothing, fashion . . . I need to be doing other things. I’m still not an established guy in Formula One. I’m still different.”
For different, read an outsider. He was an outsider when he entered the sport in 1989, and 15 years (he took a two-year sabbatical in 1998) and three world titles later, he is still regarded in the paddock with a mixture of fear, suspicion and envy. The fear was interesting and not something I had considered when preparing for the interview. I had planned to keep things light and fluffy with questions such as: “Do you agree that it would make us better men if the sex urge came with an on/off switch?” Or: “Okay, Flav, between you and me, Heidi or Naomi?” I’d planned to say: “Sex with a supermodel must be absolutely fantastic.” I’d planned to sniff his armpits and say: “Okay mate, you’ve got me, what’s the secret?” But instead of some harmless fun, here I am, sitting in his office at the Spanish Grand Prix, trembling in my boots as I bring him bad news.
He has picked up my copy of The Piranha Club and is examining the highlighted paragraph. “Are you aware of any of the myths circulating outside (in the paddock) about where you came from?” I inquire.
“Yes,” he replies, “and this (the passage in the book) is another one . . . I’ve never had a problem talking about my past — ask any of the Italian journalists. I was the first to tell everything that happened. But the moment you are famous, people love to discover something, and there were all kinds of stories put around . . . I was in the Foreign Legion . . . I was . . .”
“I think it comes from the fact that nobody knew his background,” Spinelli interrupts. “Everybody knows that Bernie (Ecclestone) was once a mechanic and that Frank Williams was . . .” “No, I’ll tell you what it was,” Briatore fumes. “You come here and you beat all these people and they go f****** mad.
I remember something Gianni Agnelli (a former director at Ferrari) said to Luciano Benetton a few years ago: ‘I don’t understand, you’re a T-shirt-maker and you’re beating us’. But there have been all kinds of stories put around. Do you remember when there was the bomb scare in London? Everybody in the paddock was saying, ‘Oh my God, it’s the mafia, they’re after Briatore’, and all this bullshit. And two days later we had the statement from the IRA (the bomb had been abandoned outside his home).”
“It’s said that you knew John Gotti (the New York mobster),” I suggest. “Never met him. Rubbish. Look, there’s no mystery about me. I would love if there was, but there’s no mystery. And if there was something funny (about my past) I can tell you that after 15 years in Formula One it would be out.” Ron Dennis, the McLaren boss, has been quoted as saying that he does not understand how someone who knows so little about Formula One has been so successful at it. “Maybe I know more than some people believe,” Briatore bristles. “It’s not because you’re a good spender with American Express that you’d make a good boss of that company. There’s a difference, no? Because if there’s not a difference, plenty of my ex-girlfriends would be chairmen. It’s not because you dress in Dolce & Gabbana that you’re a good designer — it has nothing to do with that.
“Managing a Formula One team is nothing special. That’s a mistake that everyone makes — that it’s so special, so difficult, so dramatic. It’s not easy, but I’ve seen tough competition in my other businesses as well and it’s not as tough as opening a shop in New York.” “It is said you watch The Sopranos,”
I tease. “No.” “You don’t?” “I’ve heard about it, but I don’t watch it.” “That was supposed to be a joke.” “I watch football,” he says. “Really?” I ask. “What’s your favourite team?” A mischievous smile lightens up his face. “Juventus,” he says, shrugging.
