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| Birth Name(s) : Flavio Briatore |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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| Profession:
Public Figure |
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Full Flavio Briatore Biography
Flavio Briatore (born April 12, 1950) is an Italian businessman and managing director of the Renault Formula One team.
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 and indicates someone who is prepared to undergo any trouble in order to get what he wants. The restaurant eventually closed.
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.
As store owners began to complain of competition from other Benetton stores, the number of stores decreased to two hundreds and Briatore began to look for a new business.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
Briatore replaced Alonso with Kovalainen for 2007, saying: "With Kovalainen, I hope to find the anti-Alonso".
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. On September 1, 2007 it was officially announced that Briatore (along with Bernie Ecclestone) had bought Queens Park Rangers (QPR) Football Club.
According to the Italian gossip media, Briatore is engaged to marry the 27-year-old 'Wonderbra' model Elisabetta Gregoraci. |
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