Bernie Ecclestone and his wife Fabiana Flosi attend the Austrian Formula One Grand Prix at Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria on June 22nd, 2014 // GEPA pictures / Red Bull Content Pool // SI201406220523 // Usage for editorial use only //
On 27 April 2012, Bernie Ecclestone confirmed his engagement to Fabiana Flosi, a Brazilian lawyer he had been seeing for some time. Ecclestone was 81. Flosi was 36. Formula 1’s most powerful figure had, across decades of running the sport, generated column inches through commercial battles, political manoeuvring and contractual brinkmanship. This time the story was rather more personal.
The engagement
Ecclestone and Flosi married in 2012. It was his third marriage.
She had worked in sports marketing and the couple had met through Formula 1’s Brazilian connections, a circuit the sport travels in ways that extend well beyond the race weekend at Interlagos.
The announcement generated the kind of attention that attaches to anything involving Ecclestone, who had spent so long at the centre of Formula 1 that his personal life was treated as an extension of the sport’s ongoing drama.
Ecclestone at that point
In 2012, Ecclestone was still firmly in control of Formula 1 as chief executive of the Formula One Group. He had been the dominant commercial force in the sport since the late 1970s, building a television rights empire and a race calendar that had made Formula 1 a genuinely global product.
He was also, by 2012, facing increasing scrutiny from the private equity ownership structure that had accumulated around the sport, and legal complications in Germany that would occupy him for years.
SILVERSTONE, GREAT BRITAIN - MARCH 11: Bernie Ecclestone and his partner Fabiana Flosi at the Silverstone Adidas Half Marathon in aid of Wings for Life UK, Silverstone, Great Britain. Credit: Andrew Hone // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool // SI201412190722 // Usage for editorial use only //
He continued running the sport until Liberty Media completed their takeover in 2017, after which Ecclestone’s long reign came to an end.
He and Flosi remained together throughout.
In 2023, at the age of 92, Ecclestone became a father again when Flosi gave birth to a son. Formula 1 noted it, briefly, and moved on to the next race.
