Thursday 30 June 2022 11:57 PM GUY ADAMS: 'I'd take a bullet for him': Bernie Ecclestone speaks up for ... trends now
What does Bernie Ecclestone find so attractive about short-tempered, vertically challenged dictators? That was the question left hanging by his defence of Vladimir Putin yesterday when he said he would 'take a bullet' for the invader of Ukraine.
Bizarrely, Putin was not the first or even the most genocidal despot to have drawn the 91-year-old former motor racing tycoon's public approval.
That would be Adolf Hitler, who Ecclestone infamously decided to laud in a 2009 interview for his ability to 'command a lot of people able to get things done'.
There followed the most almighty row.
It was echoed yesterday when he was lambasted for hailing 'first-class person' Putin in a car-crash TV interview.
He also claimed to the astonishment of Kate Garraway who was interviewing him that the invasion of Ukraine was not 'intentional' and played down the significance of a racist slur aimed at Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The billionaire has been pictured enjoying chats with the Russian president over the years, including at the Sochi Grand Prix, which he brokered in 2014.
Asked on ITV's Good Morning Britain if he still regards Putin as a friend, he replied: 'I'd still take a bullet for him. I'd rather it didn't hurt, but if it does I'd still take a bullet, because he's a first-class person. What he's doing is something he believed was the right thing he was doing for Russia.
Asked on ITV's Good Morning Britain if he still regards Putin as a friend, Bernie Ecclestone replied: 'I'd still take a bullet for him. I'd rather it didn't hurt, but if it does I'd still take a bullet, because he's a first-class person. What he's doing is something he believed was the right thing he was doing for Russia'
Ecclestone has been pictured enjoying chats with the Russian president over the years, including at the Sochi Grand Prix, which he brokered in 2014. Pictured: The pair at the Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix competition October 11, 2015 in Sochi
'Unfortunately, he's like a lot of business people, certainly like me, we make mistakes from time to time. When you've made the mistake, you have to do the best you can to get out of it.'
In the same appearance from Ibiza, he was asked how he could justify thousands of deaths in the conflict.
'I don't. It wasn't intentional,' he replied. 'I'm quite sure Ukraine, if they'd wanted to get out of it properly, could have done.'
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who was interviewed on the same programme, blasted: 'I think those comments are extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary.' Ecclestone also defended the former F1 champion Nelson Piquet, who apologised this week after it emerged he had used a racist slur to describe Hamilton. He leapt to his defence: Piquet would 'never go out of his way to say anything bad', Ecclestone said, adding that Sir Lewis should have 'brushed' the remark aside.
He displayed the same casual attitude when critics pointed out in 2009 that among the things Hitler 'got done' was the murder of six million Jews. Then, he said he'd only really meant to refer to Hitler's pre-Holocaust career, up to around 1938. After that, 'the guy was obviously a lunatic'.
Jewish groups nonetheless called for his resignation from Formula One, the cash-soaked sport he'd run as a personal fiefdom since the late 1970s.
Their ire was stoked by a follow-up interview in which Ecclestone decided to accuse Jews of failing to solve the banking crisis even though 'they have a lot of influence everywhere'. Despite the blatant anti-Semitism, Ecclestone would survive as the figurehead of this most corporate of sports for eight more years.
Nelson Piquet, speaking on a Brazilian podcast (pictured) about an incident between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone last year, has been heavily criticised for a racist remark aimed at the Briton. Piquet has since come out to claim the wording had no racial intent
Lewis Hamilton, pictured left, arriving at Silverstone today ahead of this weekend's British Grand Prix and right at a press conference today, has questioned why 'older voices' are being given a platform amid an ongoing racism storm in Formula 1
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the manner in which he controlled Formula One for roughly four decades, building a fortune estimated at just shy of £3billion, his affection for Putin is rooted in admiration for his no-nonsense leadership skills.
'I am not a supporter of democracy,' Ecclestone once said. 'You need a dictator. As a dictator, you say, 'This is what I am going to do.' In a democracy, it gets watered down.'
In 2019, he said that we'd all be better off if Putin was running Europe because 'he does what he says he's going to do'.
Naturally, apologists for him often argue that he doesn't really believe the grotesque nonsense he insists on
