The younger daughter of Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone looks every inch the pampered pit-stop princess. I’m bracing my wallet to take a huge hit – perhaps a £200 bottle of Cristal champagne, which is surely what this sort of person drinks. But she orders an abstemious cup of herbal tea.And it doesn’t take long in Petra’s company to realise that she has inherited much more from her driven, successful father than merely his billions. Even Tamara, Petra’s equally pretty but rather wilder older sister, appears to be settling down: she has a presenting job on Sky Italia, and is the new face of luxury jewellery firm Moussaieff.
But most of the credit must go to Slavica, their statuesque Croatian mother, whom Bernie met in 1982 at the Italian Grand Prix where she was modelling T-shirts, and married after the birth of Tamara.
‘She dedicated her whole life to the three of us – my dad, my sister and me,’ says Petra. ‘She always put me and Tamara ahead of herself, which is the most amazing thing. I don’t think I could be a housewife or a stay-at-home mum. I’m too selfish.’
At times, ex-model Slavica’s determination to keep her own and her two daughters’ feet on the ground comes across as almost perverse. ‘We’ve got a dishwasher,’ says Petra, ‘but my mum never uses it. She thinks that she can do a better job with her hands, and she finds cleaning and ironing therapeutic.’
When they went abroad on luxury holidays to India, Egypt or Morocco, Slavica would insist on taking buses into the interior to see the gritty reality of life outside the five-star hotels.
‘We’ve seen some pretty grim things. I remember we went to an orphanage in Brazil, and the children were so incredibly beautiful and so happy with what they had. It makes you feel really guilty because you don’t appreciate what you’ve got,’ says Petra.
‘When I’m on my dad’s boat in the summer, away from everything else in the world, I know I’m a really lucky girl, and I don’t ever take it for granted. But I haven’t had everything just because I wanted it. My parents would only give me gifts when I’d passed exams or done something to deserve them, which I think makes a huge difference.’
‘We’ve seen some pretty grim things. I remember we went to an orphanage in Brazil, and the children were so incredibly beautiful and so happy with what they had. It makes you feel really guilty because you don’t appreciate what you’ve got,’ says Petra.
‘When I’m on my dad’s boat in the summer, away from everything else in the world, I know I’m a really lucky girl, and I don’t ever take it for granted. But I haven’t had everything just because I wanted it. My parents would only give me gifts when I’d passed exams or done something to deserve them, which I think makes a huge difference.’
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