Coulthard: 'George Harrison played me unheard Bernie Ecclestone F1 song'

“Musicians always came around F1, and a surreal rock star moment was when George Harrison was still alive,” says the ex-McLaren man.

“We went to a dinner in Melbourne with Norbert Haug [former Mercedes motor sport boss], and George was there.

“In this small restaurant, at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, he played us a song he’d written called ‘Bernie Says’ – it’s never been published.”

In the pre-Liberty days of F1, the softly-spoken Ecclestone ruled the grand prix world with an iron fist in a velvet glove, much to amusement of Harrison.

“The chorus line was basically: ‘Bernie says, do this, Bernie says…’ it was just showing that Bernie was the dictator of F1, that everything that happened would be because Bernie had decided,” says Coulthard.

“But it was done in a in a musical, quirky, Beatles, George Harrison way, which was kind of a moment! [You think] wow, this is pretty special!

“You’re seeing you’re seeing the creation of something which has never been aired. We did a lot of fun stuff over the years!”

That wasn’t the only thing Harrison showed to the McLaren drivers though. While the music video for his first F1 tune had been a typical ’70s big budget affair, his newer single had a rather more DIY approach.

“He played the song off the CD player, and he also had this Panasonic video camera that you held, imagine a thick iPad with a hand strap and it rotated around. He filmed a lot of his own ‘movie’ around Formula 1 with it [to accompany ‘Bernie Says’.]

“He loved the sport, and came along a lot with Barry Sheene and James Hunt. So he obviously liked a little bit of the craziness!”

Harrison would form lasting friendships with the above motor sport hellraisers, as well as Stewart and legendary Brabham/McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray.

“I used to go to watch motorcycle racing at Aintree, in Liverpool, and I saw a poster advertising sports car racing,” Harrison told The Times in a March 2000 interview of his early motor sport experiences.

“I used to go up to the railway straight at Aintree and my earliest memory of a car is a Jaguar XK120 racing a Mercedes-Benz 300SL.

“Another early memory was Fangio allowing Moss to pass him in the last 50 metres of the [1955] British Grand Prix at Aintree.

“I loved the Mercedes W196 from the 1950s, the Lotus 25, and Lotus 79.

“I have played guitar with Damon [Hill] and Jacques Villeneuve, drums with Eddie Jordan and taught Gerhard Berger the ukelele … but the Formula 1 supergroup I am really in is called FLB with Norbert Haug on accordion and lederhosen. I hear Max [Mosley, president of the FIA] and Bernie [Ecclestone] are thinking of joining…”