Bernie loves a chase

The air at Silverstone is thick with the smell of petrol and roasting meat from one of the many carnivore-friendly snack trailers (it's impossible to get anything resembling a salad in this place). Groups of young men grab free posters and stare at the bored-looking glamour models standing by the display cars (they're not in bikinis and high heels but it is a bit chilly). Those women that are here reluctantly trail their overweight, baseball-capped husbands.

Bernie Ecclestone has an explanation for the few women in Formula One, behind the scenes as well as in the stands. "Women should really be in the kitchen, shouldn't they?" says the sport's billionaire 73-year-old supremo.

"They should wear white, like a domestic appliance, and they shouldn't be allowed out. You don't take the washing machine out of the house, do you? Maybe women are watching it on television at home when they've finished the washing up. I don't mind women watching television, they're entitled to some form of relaxation."

He chuckles but I don't think he's joking. "It's not a woman's sport," he says. But surely it's the one sport where men and women could compete at the same level - after all, the drivers are small and slim and doesn't the car do most of the work anyway?

"The G-force is incredible, you have to have a neck like this," he says, making his hands into a shape that could hold a watermelon. "I suppose they could do saloon car racing, but certainly not this. I don't think they could ever be competitive enough."

So away from the race circuit, what does he think of women drivers? "We don't want that. If women only adopted this whole principle [never leave the kitchen] they wouldn't be out on the road."

His fiery Croatian wife, Slavica, at 5ft 11in a whole eight inches taller and 28 years younger than her husband, might have something to say about this although he insists she loves domestic life. "She has a lot of money and could pay people to do things like washing up but she likes to do it herself."

They met in 1981 at the Monza racetrack in Italy, where she was modelling sportswear. Not a man easily intimidated, he insists their differences in height and age were never an issue. "She was quite an attractive girl so, being a male, I just chatted away to her until I captured her. Men like to hunt and women want to be hunted." He admits it took him a long time to "capture" her, though.

We're having lunch in "Bernie's Bus", Ecclestone's huge, air-conditioned silver trailer. Each team's trailer is lined up according to his perfectionist specifications. Jenson Button, the English driver, is being interviewed outside his BAR team's trailer, Eddie Jordan is milling around and the Ferrari engineers are having lunch.

Disappointingly, there are no pitstop babes in sight but all the waitresses working in the gleaming cafes that seem to have sprung miraculously into life in the paddock are gorgeous.

Ecclestone and I sit around a grey leather booth, with a television showing the day's track activities. He is wearing a crisp white shirt, the collar embroidered with little F1 logos, his silver hair falling over his tinted spectacles. He eats very quickly.

I ask if he's read Beverley Turner's book. "Who?" he says, disingenously. He knows full well that Turner presented ITV's F1 news coverage for three years and has written a scathing book, casting his world as a cesspit of sexism, arrogance and big business.

"Maybe without Formula One, people would still be horrible to her," he says, leaning forward and fixing me with a beady stare. "Maybe she's the sort of person people want to be horrible to."

Ecclestone is not someone you'd want to get on the wrong side of. "I'm a good friend and a bad enemy." He may be small but he still seems a scary proposition.

Despite being one of the world's richest men, he refuses to employ security. "If someone wants to shoot me, they will. If anyone kidnapped me, I don't know who would give the money to get me back. There are an awful lot of people who would pay to keep me there."

He isn't sure if he has any friends. "You never know who's a friend until you need something, so I hope I'm never in that position. I've got people that I've known for a long time and I suppose I'd call them friends. I don't really hang around with anyone. I don't have the time."

Ecclestone grew up in Bexleyheath, south London. As a boy he sold food to his schoolfriends. As a teenager, he competed in both motorbike and car races until a crash in 1951 ended any dreams of becoming a professional driver. He briefly worked as a gas fitter, then made a lot of money in property and car dealing.

In 1971, he took over the Brabham motor racing team and after years of wheeling and dealing, ended up controlling Formula One.

Now the richest self-made man in Britain - he has a £2.4billion fortune - he turned motor-racing into a glamorous multibillion dollar global industry. He could retire at any time, but at 73 and having undergone a triple-heart bypass four years ago, he shows few signs of stopping.

"Maybe I will retire but at the moment, I'm not thinking about it. It won't be something that's planned, it will probably be if I have a bad day or someone upsets me too much."

Like who? "It could be anyone - it could be you - and I'll decide that's it. I don't do it to make money - that's really just a means of keeping score. I don't need to spend all this money, there are people who spend a lot and whether it makes them happy or not, I don't know. Probably not."

Does it make him happy? "No. The only good thing is that you feel a bit more secure. What can a man buy? I have an aeroplane because I have to chase around a lot because of the business. We have a chalet in Switzerland and I've got a boat." The "boat" is a £73 million, 85-metre yacht.

The Ecclestones - Bernie, Slavica and their daughters Tamara, 20 and Petra, 16 - live in a huge house in Chelsea (he had a mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, which he recently sold to steel magnate Lakshi Mittal for £70 million).

Tamara is studying psychology at university and Petra is still at school. "She realises she has to go to school but given the chance, she wouldn't. She'd prefer to be out shopping."

He says he and his wife have tried hard to keep the children's feet on the ground. "Slavica looks after that side of things. She's very sensible. She takes economy flights and she doesn't stay in the grandest hotels."

Most of his fortune is in off-shore trusts in his wife's name. Isn't he worried she might run off with the money? "She can do what she wants with it. If you give something away, you can't take it back again. I doubt she knows how much is there, she's not that interested."

So what everyday things do the couple do? "Apart from sex you mean?" says Ecclestone with a mischievous chuckle. "We watch TV, we go to the supermarket. I like supermarkets, I find them very therapeutic."

He is a big (and anonymous) donor to charities, but his £1million donation to New Labour, dubbed "cash for ash", stirred up the biggest controversy of his career and severely embarrassed Tony Blair. When it was found out that the Prime Minister had supported the exemption of F1 from a ban on tobacco advertising, Blair was forced to return the donation. Does Ecclestone regret getting involved with Labour?

"Yes," he says. "I thought at the time they would do something good for this country but if you look back at the person who has done the most for Britain, it is Mrs Thatcher. Thank God she didn't stay in the kitchen."

If it's not the money that drives him, it is his quest for achievement that sees him working seven days a week.

"I get satisfaction from doing things," he says. "I put a race on in Bahrain, and one in China, which took 10 years to do. I put a race on in Hungary behind the Iron Curtain and everyone said I was mad. it was run by the KGB in those days and I convinced them to build a race circuit. Maybe we could do one in Russia, that would be another step forward. When I'm lying there, waiting to die at least I can say I've done one or two things."

Formula One goes to Istanbul next year and after last week's successful F1 demonstration day in London, Ecclestone is looking into moving the British grand prix to the capital. He's far from impressed with Silverstone; he believes the former airfield is in need of drastic redevelopment.

Last week, 400,000 people gathered to watch eight cars racing down Regent Street and Ecclestone thinks it is a viable alternative, although whether he is using it as a way to get Silverstone to smarten up its act remains to be seen.

"It would be very good for London, it would bring in a lot of money. We didn't expect more than 25,000 people, so nobody was quite ready for that. That was just a demonstration. With the right route and the right organisation for half a million spectators, it would be a huge success."

What of the charge that F1 has lost its competitive edge - predictably Schumacher won his 10th victory of the year yesterday for Ferrari. "They all operate with the same regulations, Ferrari just do a much better job of running the business than anyone else and Schumacher is incredible."

But where, apart from Ecclestone himself, are the characters in motor racing? "Our environment today doesn't breed characters. The sponsors want the guy to represent them and there's an awful lot of money involved. In the good old days, they'd be out partying until four in the morning, now it's all different. It is a shame.

"Right," he says, finishing his espresso. "You've got enough?" It sounds like a question, asked in his affable way, but it's Ecclestone's chequered flag - our chat is over.

Down the steps, into the seating area with crisp white linen tablecloths and fresh flowers, I nearly do a wrong-turn into the kitchen. I can't help thinking Bernie Ecclestone would have been pleased.