Bernie Ecclestone, the 95-year-old Formula One supremo, was stopped by authorities at Tires Aerodrome near Cascais, Portugal, after landing in his private jet from Switzerland with an undeclared shotgun. He told the Daily Mail he had brought the gun over for clay-pigeon shooting and lacked the required "blue book" documentation, describing the ordeal as "wall-to-wall aggravation" that held him up for hours before being resolved. His wife, Fabiana Flosi, has since travelled to Lisbon to surrender the weapon or settle the paperwork, while the Portuguese PSP police have denied making any such arrest.

Ecclestone said he had cleared customs without issue before a policeman searched his bag and questioned the missing documents, at which point officers threatened arrest. This is not his first firearms-related brush with the law: he was previously arrested in Brazil in May 2022 for carrying a handgun, a LW Seecamp .32 he said he'd bought years earlier from an F1 mechanic purely as a deterrent, though he was released on bail. The Cascais incident comes months after his wife reportedly bought a £35million mansion in the area, described by a Portuguese newspaper as the country's largest-ever private home sale.