Flavio Briatore

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Flavio Briatore at the 2006 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Flavio Briatore (born April 12, 1950) is an Italian businessman. He is managing director of the Renault Formula One team and joint owner of Queens Park Rangers FC.

Early life and Benetton career

Briatore was born in Verzuolo near Cuneo, Italy, in the Maritime Alps, from a family of elementary school teachers. He got a diploma in Land Surveying at Fassino di Busca's high school with the lowest grades. Briatore found early work as a ski instructor and restaurant manager. He opened a restaurant named Tribüla, which was Briatore's nickname. The restaurant eventually closed.

In the 1970s he lived in Cuneo and became an assistant to businessman Attilio Dutto, owner of the Paramatti Vernici (formerly owned by Michele Sindona). Dutto was killed on March 21, 1979 in a car bomb attack ascribed to the Red Brigades.

Briatore next moved to Milan and worked in the Italian stock exchange. During this period, he met Luciano Benetton, founder of the Benetton clothing company. The two became friends and eventually business partners.

Briatore was involved in the bankruptcy of Paramatti, and eventually convicted on various counts of fraud in Bergamo and Milan to 4 years and 6 months of prison. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands, where he kept close relations to Benetton and opened some Benetton stores.

When Benetton opened his first five stores in the United States in 1979, he appointed Briatore as director of the group's American operations.

Due to Benetton's unorthodox methods of franchising, the chain experienced a brief boom in popularity in the US. By 1989, there were eight hundred stores in the United States. Briatore, having taken a cut of each franchising agreement, became very wealthy.

Benetton were also known for their divisive and attention-grabbing advertisements. Briatore explained how they raised the company's profile: "We decided to do something very controversial that people would pick up on - 50% of people thought it was great and 50% thought it was awful, but in the meantime everyone was talking about Benetton."

As store owners began to complain of competition from other Benetton stores, the number of stores decreased to two hundred and Briatore began to look for a new business.

Formula One

Benetton Formula

Briatore attended his first Formula One race, the Australian Grand Prix, in 1988, having in the past proclaimed his lack of interest in the sport. Luciano Benetton appointed him commercial director of his Formula One team, Benetton Formula Ltd. (formerly Toleman), and when he fired the team management shortly thereafter, Briatore was promoted to managing director and set about turning Benetton into a competitive team.

He hired and quickly fired engineer John Barnard. Barnard's successor was Tom Walkinshaw, whose greatest achievement with the team was to lure young driver Michael Schumacher from the Jordan team after his first F1 race in 1991. Briatore, too, contributed to this achievement. The Times observed that Briatore knew Schumacher could be the best and built a team around him at Benetton that eventually beat the Williams Number 2 driver Damon Hill after 3 times world champion Ayrton Senna was killed at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Schumacher went on to win at Spa in 1992 and again at Estoril in 1993 before claiming the World Drivers' Championship in 1994 and 1995. The Benetton team won the World Constructors' Championship in 1995.

Late in 1994, Briatore purchased the ailing Ligier team to acquire its stock of Renault engines. FIA regulations, however, did not permit him to own the team, so he sold it to Walkinshaw. He took on complete management of Benetton, but when Schumacher and a number of key technical staffers departed for Ferrari in 1996, the team slipped to the middle of the grid.

Briatore purchased a share of the Minardi team in 1996, but being unable to sell it to British American Tobacco, as he had hoped, he sold out to fellow owners Giancarlo Minardi and Gabriele Rumi. Benetton fired him in 1997 in favour of David Richards.

From 1998 to 2000, he sold Renault engines, re-badged them as Supertecs, to Williams, Benetton, BAR and Arrows.

Renault F1

In 2000, Renault announced its plans to return to Formula One with the purchase of the Benetton Formula team. Briatore returned as managing director and team principal, replacing Rocco Benetton. The team raced as Benetton-Renault in 2001 before becoming Renault F1 in 2002.

Briatore has a reputation as a talent-scout, and probably his greatest 'find' has been Fernando Alonso. Briatore met with the teenage Spaniard in 1999. As his manager, Briatore secured him a race drive with Minardi in 2001, and promoted him to test-driver for Renault in 2002.

For 2003, Briatore fired race-driver Jenson Button and replaced him with Alonso. When he replaced Button the outcry was huge, but Briatore stated, 'Time will tell if I am wrong.'

Renault won both championships in 2005, with Alonso winning the drivers' title, but he turned his back on Briatore to sign for rivals McLaren for 2007. Despite this, Renault and Alonso retained their titles in 2006.

Briatore also acts as manager for Mark Webber and Heikki Kovalainen, and formerly managed Jarno Trulli. Despite winning the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix, Trulli was dropped from Renault by Briatore and replaced by Giancarlo Fisichella.

In April 2006, Renault F1's new president Alain Dassas stated that having a contract with Briatore for 2007 was 'a key factor' in securing the company's commitment to the sport; 'and we will do everything to ensure Flavio stays.' Briatore was duly confirmed as staying at Renault for the 2007 and 2008 seasons on 6 September 2006.

Briatore replaced Alonso with Kovalainen for 2007, saying: "With Kovalainen, I hope to find the anti-Alonso".

He used the F1 espionage scandal that year to hit back at McLaren's Ron Dennis, saying: "Here is a team that acquired an advantage illegally. Just read the regulations: for intellectual property theft the punishment is exclusion... Ron Dennis… was the one who protested us on the mass damper. He is not the immaculate saint he pretends to be on his statements."

Stance on the future of F1

Briatore has always spoken out about his desires to see F1 provide better entertainment. In 1994 he said: "All the team owners are orientated towards the technical side rather than the entertainment side, and this is a big fault. Every meeting that I go to, people are talking about pistons and suspensions. Nobody goes to a race to see that kind of thing… People come to see Schumacher and Senna racing each other."

Twelve years later his feelings were much the same: "The people in charge should be businessmen, as they are in Hollywood, not ex-engineers. Nothing costs more, and delivers less entertainment, than hidden technology. And that’s what engineers love most of all."

In 2007 he even went so far as to suggest that Grands Prix be split into two separate races as in the GP2 series.

Business Interests

Briatore has developed a diverse portfolio of business interests outside Formula 1, many of which revolve around fashion.

He created the Billionaire brand in 1998 and owns a club in Sardinia under that name. A line of Billionaire fashion and sportswear is available as well as a haute couture line, Billionaire Italian Couture. In addition to that he opened Cipriani's restaurant in Mayfair, London in 2004 and owns the pharmaceuticals company Pierrel. He also operates a Tuscan beach club and Lion in the Sun, a holiday resort in Kenya.

In 2007 he was linked to a takeover of English Championship Club, Queens Park Rangers, from a Monaco based consortium led by Gianni Paladini. [1] On September 1, 2007 it was officially announced that Briatore (along with Bernie Ecclestone) had bought Queens Park Rangers (QPR) Football Club. [2]

Queens Park Rangers Football Club

On 7th November 2007, Briatore completed his takeover of Queens Park Rangers together with Bernie Ecclestone.

In December 2007, Briatore and Ecclestone were joined as co-owners of QPR by multi-billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, the 4th richest person in the world, who bought 20% of the club [3]

Personal life

In the late 1990s, Briatore gained notoriety among European tabloids for his romantic relationships with supermodels such as Naomi Campbell, Adriana Volpe, and Heidi Klum. Klum gave birth to Briatore's only child, a daughter named Helene "Leni" Klum, on 4 May 2004. According to Klum, Briatore is not involved in the child's life.

Briatore married the 28-year-old 'Wonderbra' model Elisabetta Gregoraci, on June 14 2008. The driver of the bridal car, was Fernando Alonso.

External links

• Flavio's Official Website
• Report about Flavio and the history of his Formula 1 team (German)
• Force Blue Photo of Flavio Briatore's converted luxury yacht at Monaco Grand Prix
• Who's Who: Flavio Briatore