Bernie Ecclestone to sell £300MILLION car collection as Formula One mogul puts 69 vehicles up for sale – including Michael Schumacher’s iconic title-winning Ferrari

Bernie Ecclestone is selling his private car collection believed to be worth more than £300million.

The Formula One mogul, 94, is putting his affairs in order so that his 47-year-old Brazilian wife Fabiana is not left with the headache of dealing with his unique garage of winning grands prix cars when he dies.

Ecclestone has been accumulating his unique collection since at least the early 1970s, and it is believed to be the most valuable assembly of its sort in the world.

There are 69 cars up for sale, including the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher, Niki Lauda and that of Britain’s first world champion Mike Hawthorn in 1958. One highlight is the red machine that Schumacher drove to the title in 2002. It is thought to be worth more than £10m.

Sir Stirling Moss’s Vanwall VW10, which he drove to the team’s first constructors’ championship 66 years ago is also up for sale.

Ecclestone told the Daily Mail: ‘I am 94 and with luck I might have a few years longer – who knows? – but I didn’t want to leave Fabi wondering what to do with them if I was no longer around.

Bernie Ecclestone is selling his private car collection believed to be worth more than £300million

One highlight is the red Ferrari that Michael Schumacher (pictured) drove to the F1 world title in 2002

The Formula One mogul, 94, is putting his affairs in order to help his 47-year-old Brazilian wife Fabiana (right)

‘I love all my cars but maybe I should have done this five years ago, but I never got round to it until now.’

The collection also includes Brabham cars, belonging to the team Ecclestone owned as he took a vice-like commercial hold of the billion-dollar-a-year sport – a reign that lasted for more than four decades until American conglomerate Liberty Media bought F1 for £6.4bn in 2017.

Tom Hartley Jnr Ltd, one of the world’s leading historic racing car dealers, will conduct the sale. The cars will not be auctioned off but are open to private buyers.

Ecclestone said: ‘After collecting and owning them for so long, I would like to know where they have gone.

‘I have been collecting these cars for more than 50 years, and I have only ever bought the best of any example. Other collectors have opted for sports cars, but my passion has always been grand prix cars.

‘They are more important than any road car or other form of race car. They are pinnacle of the sport. All mine have fantastic race histories and are rare works of art.

‘I have decided to move them on to new homes that will treat them as I have and look after them as precious works of art.’

Ecclestone, who paid £650m in a fraud conviction last year for failing to declare a trust which held assets worth more than £416m, is now based in Gstaad, Switzerland, having left London about five years ago.

Sir Stirling Moss’s Vanwall VW10 (pictured), which he drove to the team’s first constructors’ championship 66 years ago is also up for sale

There are 69 cars up for sale, including the Ferraris of iconic driver Niki Lauda (pictured)

He also spends time at a Brazilian coffee farm – the size of Monaco – in Ampara, 90 miles outside Sao Paulo, a 25-minute helicopter ride from the city’s Guarulhos airport.

He and Fabiana, his third wife, spent the early months of Covid lockdown there with their now four-year-old son Ace, who is car mad. They count 600 cows and cattle and 18 horses among their plethora of animals and fish, including koi carp.

A source close to Ecclestone said: ‘It is unlikely his wife of daughters (Tamara and Petra) would want to be lumbered with the hassle of selling Bernie’s cars.

‘And, let’s be honest, if Ace wanted to start his own collection at some point in the fairly distant future, he’d have the funds to do so.’