The Piranha Club: Power and Influence in Formula One

Summary

'Welcome to the Piranha Club!' Ron Dennis (head of McLaren) to Eddie Jordan on the inception of the Jordan team. The Piranha Club is the first serious study of Formula One's most intriguing and influential figuras - the men who wield the real power. Author Tim Collings has written an entertaining and incisive analysis of the Formula One paddock, explaining how it works, who runs it, how it makes money and what sort of people exist there. Formula One hardly needs selling. It has massive television audiences worldwide and huge crowds at all the race tracks. It oozes colour, drama and glamour, not to mention money. It is the meeting point of sport, commerce, showbusiness, and gossip with technology, the automotive industry and big-time international politics. You are as likely to share a table for lunch in the paddock with Liz Hurley, Naomi Campbell or Michael Douglas as with a politician, a royal or a pop singer. The place is tumbling with intrigue and interest. It is run like clockwork and the guys who run it are the most intriguing of all. Bernie Ecclestone and Max Moseley, Luca di Montezmolo, Alain Prost and Jackie Stewart, Ron Dennis, Frank Williams, Eddie Jordan and the rest. They are from all sorts of backgrounds, but they share the common interest of Formula One motor racing - and finding a way of making money successfully. These high rollers are big people Control-freaks, racers, corporate power brokers and ego-trippers. All different. All drugged by the speed of the business.