Documentary: The trial in which Ecclestone was facing imprisonment

Bernie Ecclestone was discredited on Friday by a number of bold statements about Lewis Hamilton and the racism debate. Even at the age of 89, the man who made Formula 1 big remains an interesting but also controversial figure.

So nowadays he mainly enters the news through commentary from the sidelines. In doing so, he rubs people in such a way that Formula 1 has to emphasize on their own site that the man really has nothing more to do with the sport.

So the time that Ecclestone actually had power over the sport is already a bit behind us. However, when he was still in that position, controversy was never far away with Bernie. Nobody can deny that without him F1 would never have been as big a sport as it is now, but in that road to success some shadowy deals were made.

This 2014 Panorama episode called 'Bernie Ecclestone: Lies, Bribes and Formula One' discusses the lawsuit in which Ecclestone was accused of corruption and hung him over the head for years in prison. He managed to survive that battle as well, but this documentary does explain what he was accused of.