By Paul Weaver/The Guardian


Bernie Ecclestone goes on trial in Munich today and for the next five months Formula One will hold its breath. The man who transformed the sport into a billion-pound business and who has run it for four decades in his idiosyncratic and controversial way, faces the possibility of 10 years in jail if found guilty of bribery. The sport could face an even longer term of uncertainty, even decline.
The judge Ecclestone will be up against does not take any prisoners; or rather, he does. Peter Noll convicted the former German banker Gerhard Gribkowsky, a central figure in the Munich hearing, and sent him down for eight-and-a-half years in 2012. In his concluding statement, Noll said: “In this process we assume the driving force was Mr Ecclestone.”
Last month the same prosecutors, who have spent two years preparing for the Ecclestone case, brought down Uli Hoeness, then president of the European football champions Bayern Munich. Hoeness was jailed for three-and-a-half years for tax evasion.
If all this was not enough to seriously daunt Ecclestone  who will be 84 in October  Noll has also been handed what could be a loaded gun. In February Ecclestone  who denies any wrongdoing  won a civil case brought by the German media company Constantin Medien.
Ecclestone was accused of entering into a “corrupt agreement” with Gribkowsky, and that, as a former shareholder, Constantin Medien lost out in BayernLB’s deal to CVC as the shares were undervalued.
But although F1’s chief executive won that time, the comments by Mr Justice Newey were immensely damaging. He said it was “impossible” to regard him as a “reliable or truthful witness”.
Looking ahead to this trial, Ecclestone said: “He [the German judge] might find, when I’m in court there, that he doesn’t agree with what the English judge has said. The judge in England didn’t have all of the central witnesses, and I wasn’t there to defend whether I’m a liar or unreliable. I was there to simply state whether the shares were cheap or not.”
In Munich, Ecclestone will be accused of paying Gribkowsky a bribe of $44mn (26mn) to smooth the sale of F1 to the private equity firm CVC eight years ago.
The possible consequences for Ecclestone are dire. The CVC co-chairman, Donald Mackenzie, has said that he would fire Ecclestone if he was found guilty of wrongdoing. Ecclestone would appeal any guilty verdict.
It was the future of F1, more than Ecclestone, that was being discussed in the paddock in China last week. Although there was much sympathy for Ecclestone there was even more concern for what would be left behind.  And the fact that before then, for the next 20 weeks in which the 26-day trial will be spread over, this will be a massive distraction from a sport only just showing signs of recovering from a difficult start, following a vast number of changes to the rules and regulations.
F1 does need some fresh air blown through it. There are a number of important people in the paddock who feel that Ecclestone is well past his sell-by date but the same people are also fearful of the post-Ecclestone era, which will arrive soon enough, whatever happens in Munich.
It seems certain that Ecclestone, ultimately, will be replaced by a number of people, and one of them may include the Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, whom the current supremo gets on with better than any other leading paddock figure. Just who might take control of the sport is occupying everyone’s thoughts at CVC.
It’s not just a private equity firm that is preoccupied by all this.  The fact is that Ecclestone, a brilliant deal-maker who carries most of the information in his entrepreneurial head, is a hard act to follow.