Born in Suffolk and raised in Bexleyheath, Ecclestone began his business career trading automotive parts after World War II.

Ecclestone co-owned association football club Queens Park Rangers with Flavio Briatore from 2007 to 2011, overseeing their promotion to the Premier League.

Ecclestone sold the Formula One Group to Liberty Media in 2017, subsequently being appointed as chairman emeritus and adviser to the board of directors until his departure in 2020.

[4] Ecclestone left Dartford West Central Secondary School[4] at the age of 16 to work as an assistant in the chemical laboratory at the local gasworks[8] testing gas purity.

[10] After his accident, Ecclestone temporarily left racing to make a number of eventually lucrative investments in property and loan financing and to manage the Weekend Car Auctions firm.

Lewis-Evans suffered severe burns when his engine exploded at the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix and died six days later; Ecclestone was shocked and once again retired from racing.

He abandoned the highly successful customer car production business established by Jack Brabham and Tauranac – reasoning that to compete at the very front in Formula One you must concentrate all of your resources there.

Despite the increasing success of Murray's nimble Ford-powered cars, Ecclestone signed a deal with Alfa Romeo to use its powerful but heavy flat-12 engine from the 1976 season.

Piquet formed a close and long-lasting relationship with Ecclestone and the team, losing the title after a narrow battle with Alan Jones in 1980 and eventually winning in 1981 and 1983.

Brabham continued to run the Ford-powered BT49D in the early part of the season while reliability and driveability issues were sorted out by BMW and its technical partner Bosch.

Ecclestone and BMW came close to splitting before the turbo car duly took its first win at the 1982 Canadian Grand Prix but the partnership took the first turbo-powered world championship in 1983.

Having bought the team from Ron Tauranac for approximately $120,000 at the end of 1971, Ecclestone eventually sold it for over US$5 million to a Swiss businessman, Joachim Luhti in 1988.

[4] In parallel to his activities as team owner, Ecclestone formed the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974 with Frank Williams, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Ken Tyrrell, and Max Mosley.

[23] Negotiations with Ecclestone to keep the race in Formula One ended in the signing of a contract on 9 December to guarantee the continuation of the British Grand Prix for the following five years.

[28] Two weeks later, Gerhard Gribkowsky, a board member of Bayerische Landesbank and the chairman of SLEC, said that the banks had no intention to remove Ecclestone from his position of control.

Despite him not having caused the problem, fans and journalists blamed him for failing to take control and enforce a solution, given the position of power in which he had placed himself.

On 6 December Alpha Prema acquired JP Morgan's share of SLEC to increase its ownership of Formula One to 86%; the remaining 14% was held by Lehman Brothers.

After the loss of Silverstone as the venue for the British Grand Prix in 2008, Ecclestone came under fire from several high-profile names for his handling of Formula One's revenues.

[51] It was announced on 18 August 2011 that Ecclestone and Briatore had sold their entire shareholding in the club to Tony Fernandes, known for his ownership of the Caterham Formula 1 team.

Media attention initially focused on Labour bending its principles for a "glamour sport" and on the "false trail" of Jowell's husband's links to Benetton.

"[62] However, when Ecclestone was later told by Associated Press that the World Jewish Congress had called for his resignation, he said: "It's a pity they didn't sort the banks out," referring to the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and stated: "They have a lot of influence everywhere.

"[63] In a 2012 trial against the former BayernLB chief risk officer Gerhard Gribkowsky, the public prosecutor accused Ecclestone of being a co-perpetrator in the case.

In closing arguments at a Munich trial the public prosecutor told the court Ecclestone "hasn't been blackmailed, he is a co-perpetrator in a bribery case".

[64] In November 2012 private equity firm Bluewaters Communications Holdings filed a £409m lawsuit against the 2005 sale of Formula One, alleging it was the sport's rightful owner.

[65] In May 2013, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the Munich prosecutors' office had charged Ecclestone on two counts of bribery after a two-year investigation into his relationship with Gribkowsky.

[76] GMB's other co-host Ben Shephard asked about the death of innocent Ukrainian citizens, to which Ecclestone said it was not "intentional" and gave examples of American invasions into other countries.

[77][better source needed] In response, Formula One released a statement that said: "The comments made by Bernie Ecclestone are his personal views and are in very stark contrast to position of the modern values of the sport.

Bower's previous exposé biographies of figures such as Robert Maxwell led commentators such as Bryan Appleyard, writing for the New Statesman, to express surprise over Ecclestone's co-operation.

[83] The book recounts an episode at the 1979 Argentine Grand Prix in which Colin Chapman offered Mario Andretti $1000 to push Ecclestone into a hotel swimming pool in Buenos Aires.

[86] In early 2004, he sold one of his London residences in Kensington Palace Gardens, never having lived in it, to Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal for £57.1 million.