Briatore’s finest achievement
F1 survivor Flavio is still full of surprises
“You’ve got 20 minutes.” My heart sank as Patrizia Spinelli, Falvio Briatore’s right hand woman, handed the phone over to him. As it turned out, I got 50.
We covered a lot of ground, but what surprised me the most was when I pushed him on how proud he must be of the Benetton years. He turned instead to Supertec, the company he set up to sell Mecachrome V10s, the customer engines formerly known as Renaults that powered a number of teams after the maker briefly pulled the plug on its F1 interest at the end of ’97. One of those teams was Benetton, which paid Briatore through the nose for the privilege having lost its Renault supply, to the tune of £17m a season – months after Flavio and the family had parted company. Briatore later greased the path to Renault buying the team and returned to the helm in 2000.