Formula E’s driving force, Alejandro Agag, was born on 18 September 1970, and he enjoyed an international upbringing living in Madrid, New York City and Paris.
A competitive child, he used to play on the very same Paris streets at the historic Les Invalides where Formula E raced every spring between 2016 and 2019. It was here that he once pushed his kid brother from the moving family car.
‘He was annoying me so I opened the door and he fell out,’ recalled Agag in 2018.
‘It was quite slow and nothing really happened but we went several metres before my parents realised and we went back to pick him up.’
Graduating in the early 1990s with a degree in Economics and Business studies from the Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros (CUNEF) the diligent and fiercely intelligent Agag quickly began a career in politics via an early affiliation with the Partido Popular organisation.
Agag became the Deputy Secretary General of the European People’s Party in 1994 before two years later taking a position as a special aide to Spain’s new Prime Minister José María Aznar. It was through this role in which Agag met his future wife, Ana Aznar Botella, the daughter of Aznar and former Mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella.
By 1999 Agag had become a Member of the European Parliament at the second attempt. In doing so, Agag at 28, became the youngest ever elected Spaniard to become an MEP as he joined the Economic and Monetary affairs Commission of the European Parliament. He also became the spokesperson of the annual antitrust policy report at the European Parliament in 2000.
Also, during their 2000 annual congress in Mexico, Agag was elected Secretary General of the Centrist Democrat International (CDI), a global political organisation with over 100 member parties from all over the world. He combined these roles until 2001 when he decided to major on business activities and a year later founded AAL Investments Ltd.
Agag had always been intrigued by motorsport and sport business in general, so when an opportunity presented itself he and the then Renault F1 Team Principal Flavio Briatore acquired the Spanish TV rights to F1 and so began his first steps in to the world of motorsport.
Riding the crest of the Fernando Alonso wave of interest in F1 during the first decade of the 21st century, Agag also increasing became a useful conduit between prospective Spanish F1 commercial partners and his growing contacts within Formula One Management and F1 teams.
Agag grew from being a peripheral dealmaker to a fully-fledged player when he bought a majority stake in the Campos Grand Prix team that raced in the GP2 series which supported Formula One.
Changing the teams’ name to first to Barwa International Campos in 2008 and then Barwa Addax in 2009 in recognition of Qatari sponsors Barwa and his own Addax company, Agag tasted immediate success when Lucas di Grassi, Vitaly Petrov and Ben Hanley contributed to a first ever teams’ title in ’08.
As well as motorsport, Agag also became involved in professional football as part of a consortium of high-profile figures to buy the west London based Queens Park Rangers club.
Along with Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and the Mittal family, Agag briefly became Chairman during the fraught takeover and later took on the role of Managing Director.
It was a tumultuous tenure as a succession of managers, in the quest to get the club promoted in to the Premier League, went through the club.
QPR were eventually promoted in 2011 just as Agag’s Formula E vision was forming. The club was then sold to Malaysian businessman and former Lotus and Caterham F1 team owner Tony Fernandes.
Agag’s thrusting trajectory to become one of the highest profile of sports businessman has since seen him share a stage with Russian premier Vladimir Putin, serve as a panellist on the BBC’s flagship live political show Question Time and also to count world leaders and mayors of major cities as confidantes.
Perhaps though his most recent project was the most ambitious as he formed Extreme E which will see electric powered SUV silhouette cars were planned to take part in timed ‘rally adventure races’ in remote regions of the earth which include Greenland, the Himalayas and the Amazon rain forest. In an effort to raise awareness and generate a legacy of assisting in the revitalisation of some of the world’s most damaged terrains and eco-systems, Agag appeared again to have seen a niche.
The Start of Something Big – Agag’s Story
‘I started working more with (future FIA President) Jean (Todt) during his campaign (2008/9), because we were very close from the Ferrari times. We met because of the Ferrari-Santander deal, where I helped at the time on that deal, and he was running Ferrari.
‘When he started his campaign, he said I have a few countries where I would like you to give me a hand: Spain, Andorra, a few countries that I helped him in his campaign.
‘I think it was February 11. It was on Jean’s agenda. So we made the introduction. But the meeting had no real agenda.
‘Antonio (Tajani – EU commisioner) explained that they (the EU) were going to implement (a reduction) in CO2 emissions. He basically said listen, we’re going electric, because the car industry needs to go electric. And then Jean said we want to do an electric championship, and I said I’ll do it, I’ll be the promoter. It was almost a kind of a joke really.
‘The FIA then did a tender, but Jean didn’t mention it to me. Many months later, in March 2012, I bump into a guy from the European Commission that I knew who was working with Tajani. He tells me that this championship is going to exist, and I’m like ‘oh shit’.
‘At the time I was a bit bored with my GP2 team, so I was like OK, I’m going to call Jean again, and he said we’re very advanced now, we have a promoter almost chosen. But, I could see that this thing with the promoter was not so secure.
‘I went over to Abu Dhabi to talk to these guys, and they had all these obstacles. So finally they ring up the FIA and say we’re not going to do it, and the main reason was too small investment and too much work for them.
‘So that was my opening. That’s when I called the FIA again and said ‘you guys don’t have a promoter now, so I’ll do it.’ But Todt was very tough. I had to put in place a €10 million euro bank guarantee, and if I didn’t make the championship happen, they would keep it.
‘Enrique Banuelos was the guy who put the money, and we negotiated with the FIA. I remember we did a two-stage process. Jean said listen, this is not my decision, I don’t just give championships like this.
‘This needs to go through the Senate, to the World Council, the process, FIA, legal department, etc. He appointed Daniel Clermont, who was the chief administration officer of the FIA at the time to negotiate with me. We spent two months negotiating this contract up and down, and they did it in two stages.
‘The first stage they said OK, you’re going to have six months in which you have to bring letters from cities expressing interest in hosting a race, and you need to prove you will spend €5 million developing the cars. And you have to give us a €1 million bank guarantee, and if you don’t do anything, we keep €1 million. I managed to do all that and we signed in August 2012.”
Tomorrow: How FE meltdown almost killed FE in 2015
Excerpts taken from ‘Formula E: Racing for the Future’ by Sam Smith, published by Evro Publishing in 2021
