Flavio Briatore was born on April 12, 1950, in Verzuolo, Italy. In Formula 1, he became one of the sport’s most effective power brokers, helping build Benetton around Michael Schumacher and later backing Fernando Alonso’s title-winning rise at Renault.
Briatore was never a conventional racing man, which may have been part of the point. He arrived in Formula 1 through Benetton’s commercial world, took control of the team in the early 1990s and moved quickly enough to make half the paddock suspicious. He also moved well enough to help create a champion. After prising Schumacher away from Jordan in 1991, Briatore built Benetton around him and oversaw the team’s drivers’ titles in 1994 and 1995, plus the constructors’ crown in 1995.
He later returned to the Enstone-based team under Renault ownership and repeated the trick with Alonso. Renault won back-to-back drivers’ and constructors’ championships in 2005 and 2006, turning Alonso into the man who ended Ferrari’s run and giving Briatore a second great success story.
He was sharp, ruthless, commercially minded and often controversial, but the results were real. Schumacher and Alonso were the faces of those title runs. Briatore was the man behind the curtain, usually pulling it open himself.
