Three men will fill Bernie Ecclestone's role as head of F1. That's as unsurprising as it's overdue.
Whatever may be said about Ecclestone in the coming days -- and much of it will be negatively tainted by his questionable actions in recent years -- there is no question that Bernard Charles Ecclestone single-handedly pulled F1 up by the bootstraps from a shambling amateur game of car racing to a global sporting business.
He may have had help along the way but it was Bernie who orchestrated the talent -- and money -- of others as he moulded his astute vision into reality. You could argue that other entrepreneurs might have eventually done the same. But none would have achieved it with the same blend of flair, audacity, cheek -- and ruthlessness.
When necessary, Ecclestone made enemies as readily as he made money. The truth is that the majority of his detractors would have been frustrated by discovering the loss of a deal they thought they had won. That successful tenet of Bernie's modus operandi goes back to the 1950s when he dealt in second-hand motorcycles and cars. Traders would be halfway home before realising the intricate exchange involving several vehicles had ended with something they didn't actually want.
It would be the same decades later as race organisers negotiating with Ecclestone would find, to their detriment, that he had deftly switched currencies during a process deliberately made complex. For a man eventually worth billions, it sounds strange to say that Ecclestone was not motivated by the money, per se. For Bernie, the deal was the thing. And winning it. Which he usually did.
Satisfaction had to come from his astonishing mental agility because he was never capable of winning as a racing driver, as proved publically when he failed to qualify for the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix in a Connaught. Quick to realise his shortcoming, Ecclestone switched to managing drivers but disappeared from the racing scene at the end of 1958 when Stuart Lewis-Evans, a driver Bernie was particularly close to, died of burns received in the Moroccan Grand prix.
When Ecclestone reappeared in the paddock a decade later, he was comfortably off -- a fact that was never satisfactorily explained. Not that it needed to be, Ecclestone enjoying the mystery as he mischievously batted off suggestions he had been involved in The Great Train Robbery by saying "It was only for £2.6m. Why would I be bothered with that?"
Managing his friend Jochen Rindt was also to end under terrible circumstances at Monza in 1970 but, this time, Bernie remained on the fringe of F1. Two years later he bought Brabham, arguably one of the most significant moves not only in Ecclestone's career but also for the future of the sport.
Coming face-to-face with the shambling, piecemeal negotiating procedure between individual teams and race organisers, Bernie had little difficulty in persuading fellow competitors of the benefits associated with collective bargaining. It was to be the foundation of his powerbase, Ecclestone extending his influence to television by persuading broadcasters to pay for an annual contract rather than individual races.
For his part, Bernie realised he needed to present a professional package -- and F1 was anything but. Race weekend schedules were as varied as the quality and quantity of the entry (Ferrari being notorious for not turning up simply because Enzo Ferrari was miffed about some perceived slight).
Ecclestone's eye for detail and perfection (Brabham was one of the first teams to have mechanics in uniforms, colour-coded to each day) led to a strict timetable and a guaranteed entry. Standards and the sport's popularity rose in company with increased exposure and income, Bernie taking his substantial cut of the latter. The team principals did not mind as they enjoyed previously untold wealth.
The landscape changed dramatically in the mid-1990s when, through a deal with his close associate Max Mosley (now president of the FIA), Ecclestone's company became F1's rights holder -- at the expense of the teams, some of whom (Williams, McLaren and Tyrrell) were far from happy with the new arrangement. Too late; job done.
Bernie's path to becoming a billionaire was further smoothed in 2000 by an extraordinary 100-year-deal that allowed Ecclestone to have control of the commercial rights to F1 for a comparatively paltry $360m. This triggered a bewildering sequence of ownership deals that, at their heart and through the seller's shrewdness, appeared to have the F1 rights attached to Ecclestone by a piece of elastic as they bounced back, Bernie paying far less than he had originally received from original purchasers who were now out of their depth.
One deal that stuck was a large slice of F1 ending up in the hands of CVC Capital Partners in 2006, with Ecclestone as chief executive. He kept the shareholders happy but, in the process, the sport Ecclestone professed to love would lose focus on several fronts, leading to decline and the recent timely sale to Liberty Media.
Until this point, Ecclestone had maintained his grip on the minutiae as he failed to see the fading bigger picture. His control was absolute, from negotiating race contracts to arranging the calendar; from deciding the colour of the paddock passes to who would receive them; from granting media access to deciding how much or how little he would reveal.
Interviews with Bernie were a lottery; a game of verbal swordplay ranging from evasiveness to the monosyllabic, but all of it driven by a remarkably quick wit and razor-sharp mind. In the aftermath of a fruitless dialogue, the contradictions continued with the underlying feeling of reluctant affection for an interviewee who had somehow managed to portray a mild mix of hurt and bewilderment throughout.
There will be many, both inside the sport and beyond, whose feelings will be stronger than that as time reveals stories of private caring and generosity he would never want repeated. Ecclestone valued loyalty and considered the F1 paddock to be his extended family; the problem was, he saw spectators beyond it as an irritation interfering with the business -- his business -- of making money.
Either way, the man has more than made his mark. As things stand, however, Formula One will not be lost without him but B. C. Ecclestone will surely be lost without the dramatic world that has consumed his life.