SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium — The command center of the shimmering, multibillion-dollar road show that is Formula One Grand Prix racing is an unobtrusive, gray-walled motor home known colloquially as the Kremlin.

Named for the iron-fisted rule dispensed from its bland leather sofas, the Kremlin sits parked at the heart of a crowded paddock that is the base for teams like Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus, Mercedes and McLaren. It can be easy to miss amid the gourmet restaurants and wine-stocked bars of the teams’ palatial hospitality centers, but none in the paddock dispute that the Kremlin and its elusive tenant — the 82-year-old Englishman Bernie Ecclestone — remain the nerve center of racing’s Billionaires Row.

A former driver in feeder series for Formula One and Grand Prix team owner, Ecclestone has wielded unfettered control over Formula One for decades. His power was entrenched by a controversial deal in the late 1990s under which the sport’s governing body assigned him ownership of the Formula One commercial rights for 100 years for a small fraction of what investment analysts said they were worth. Selling the rights on to outside investors, then rolling them over again, has helped Ecclestone amass a family fortune Forbes magazine has estimated at $3.8 billion.

Ecclestone has said that he is more interested in power than money — he summers on a Mediterranean yacht, and winters in Gstaad, Switzerland, but his wealth is largely conspicuous only because of the multimillion-dollar, gossip-magazine lifestyles of his two 20-something, real-estate-collecting daughters. But few sporting entrepreneurs can match his authority. His powers include divvying up Formula One’s $1.5 billion a year in earnings between the racing teams and the sport’s current owner, a London-based private equity company, CVC Capital Partners, which bought a majority share in the commercial rights for a reported $2.5 billion in 2006.