Jesús Gil y Gil was one of the best-known figures in Spain during the 1990s. In 1987 he became president and owner of Atlético de Madrid, one of the country’s most successful football clubs, and in 1991 he was elected mayor of Marbella, positions he held until 2003 and 2002 respectively.
With a style that was at least peculiar, Gil rode a middle path between show business, sport, and politics, and his life was revisited in 2019 in the HBO documentary ‘The Pioneer’. However, what even that ignores is something not many people know: Jesús Gil was actually close to creating the first Spanish team in the history of Formula 1.
Jesús Gil sought to buy Brabham from Bernie Ecclestone
Everything began in 1987. Gil’s sporting ambitions did not end with his controversial takeover of Atlético de Madrid, and he decided that the next step would be to own a Formula 1 team. It would be the first Spanish structure in the big circus, 23 years before Hispania Racing Team would finally have that honor.
However, the dark tricks that served him to seize control of Atlético de Madrid (buying 95% of the shares while turning it into a public company) would not work in Formula 1. He needed different methods. Gil traveled to the German Grand Prix in 1987, and there he began to size up which teams might be for sale.
If Gil was already a character, in Hockenheim he confronted the character among characters: Bernie Ecclestone. The future Formula 1 magnate was at that time the owner of Brabham, a once-champion outfit that was now in decline, with a failed BMW partnership.
The Formula 1 of the era was strictly dominated by the Williams Honda drivers Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost battling in McLaren, and a young Ayrton Senna beginning to pose a real threat to the giants with his Lotus. The only Spanish trace was Adrián Campos, racing with his modest Minardi.
Gil returned from Germany with quite clear numbers: he would need between 18 and 25 million euros if he wanted to buy the Brabham team and establish his own Formula 1 outfit. Around 3,000 million pesetas of that era, which Gil did not have, but he knew whom he could ask: the Government of Spain.
Without hesitation, on July 28, 1987, Gil held a press conference in which he stated phrases such as “I am willing to carry out the purchase if it receives sufficient backing from the Spanish government.” In short, Gil wanted the Spanish people to pay for his Formula 1 team. Needless to say, the government of Felipe González denied any option.
And it is that Spain stood on the threshold of a pivotal year in its recent history: 1992. The Barcelona Olympics and the Sevilla Expo were going to relaunch the country’s image, and Gil wanted to ride that wave to obtain a government handout for his own team. In fact, the IOC and F1 had reached an agreement to run an Olympic Grand Prix at Montmeló in 1992.
That Grand Prix never fully materialized, or more precisely, it did, but under the traditional name of the Spanish Grand Prix. When the earlier agreement was reached, the Spanish race was in Jerez, and the Olympic GP would have been something exceptional in Barcelona in 1992, but F1 broke with Jerez and Barcelona became the fixed site of the Spanish Grand Prix in 1991.
Jesús Gil became the laughingstock of Formula 1
Up to this point, everything might seem normal, or at least as normal as things were with Jesús Gil as the central figure. But the delirium came a few days later. The Spanish businessman gave an interview to L’Equipe, the prestigious French publication, in which he spoke in more detail about his intentions in Formula 1.
He dropped some surreal headlines. “Buying Brabham is not a problem. Both Ecclestone and I will reach an agreement. The key is being able to sign Ayrton Senna for the next season and bring in Honda’s engine. And I think I can say I am not far from reaching an agreement to make that happen”.
After that remark, Formula 1 could only mock Gil, showing how little he knew about the world he was trying to enter. “It cannot be that the first one to arrive loaded with millions aims to appropriate this team, that driver, or that engine,” Alain Prost said about Gil.
‘The Professor’ added that “the impression I form of this character from his megalomaniac and mythomaniac statements is that, thankfully, he is not at all what he believes himself to be.” Ecclestone also distanced himself completely from Gil: “I don’t understand this guy, everything he says about selling Brabham is completely false.”
If there was any truth in what Jesús Gil claimed, it was that Ayrton Senna and Honda would indeed team up next season. But not in the supposed Jesús Gil F1 Team, rather in McLaren, where they formed one of the most formidable outfits in history and won three drivers’ world championships, the first in 1988 and those of 1990 and 1991.
Jesús Gil’s dream of owning his own Formula 1 team was cut short along the way by the Spanish government’s refusal and Formula 1’s rejection after his fantastical statements. He had also claimed that he would invest more than 20,000 million pesetas in his project. Ultimately, he had to turn to politics.
Bravo F1 also had its chance a few years later
Some years later, specifically in 1992, Adrián Campos launched another Spanish Formula 1 project with the aim of entering the premier category in 1993, but there were problems with car manufacturing, the vehicle failed tests and the Bravo F1 project fell by the wayside.
We had to wait until 2010 when, again under Campos—the true pioneer of Spanish motorsport who died in 2021—Campos Meta finally moved forward and later, without his presence, evolved into Hispania and HRT to become the first Spanish team in Formula 1 history. Although it lasted only three years.
On the other hand: Brabham. At the end of 1987 BMW pulled out of F1, leaving the team without engines, and Ecclestone pulled the team out before the first race of 1988. The first season without Brabham since 1961. The team finally disappeared in 1992 due to financial problems while under the Japanese group Middlebridge.
