Bernie Ecclestone and `young` fiancee Fabiana Flosi `very much in love`

London -  Fabiana Flosi, who is are engaged to be married after Bernie Ecclestone after he proposed last week, is twice his height and half his age.

The 35-year-old has curves like Beyonce, a stunning smile and a youthful radiance, while the F1 mogul is short, suspicious-looking and undeniably elderly.

It’s not quite true, actually, because at 35 she is less than half his age — he will be 82 years old in October. And in terms of height, she is 5ft 10in to his relatively diminutive 5ft 3in, which is  certainly an eye-catching difference.

However, the billionaire is used to having a much taller lady on his arm during his 25-year marriage to ex-wife Slavica, who was 6ft in her stockings.

The differences clearly don’t bother Bernie, who last week announced that he had just proposed to Fabiana after three years together.

“I didn’t have to get down on one knee,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

Fabiana is now wearing a gob-smacking 100,000-pound marquise-cut diamond ring and a big smile.

“A genuine and very sweet couple and very much in love,” a close pal said.

Indeed, Fabiana is credited with changing Bernie, softening him from the grudge-bearing martinet of popular imagination into a more relaxed human being.

Under her influence, he now takes holidays and relaxes on them — something he seldom did with Slavica.

One in his circle said that in the first flush of romance there was even a period when he and Fabiana were trying for a baby. 

Tamara and Petra threw monumental strops when Bernie first got together with Fabiana in 2009 — the same year his divorce from Slavica was finalised.

There was a period when they wouldn’t attend events where she was present and Tamara publicly dismissed the relationship as “weird”.

Fabiana is a straight-laced and respectable young professional from Brazil’s middle classes. Before meeting Bernie, she had come through one brief, early and unhappy marriage, followed by

a long romance with a paediatric doctor, with whom she lived in San Paulo.

Her father is a retired civil servant, with a background in engineering. He is younger than Bernie. But future son and father-in-law are said to get on very well.

Her mother is a housewife. She has a sister, Fernanda. The family live in a large, stylish home in Sao Paulo and have a holiday home in the country.

Fabiana took a degree in international trade before starting to work for Rohonyi Tamas, the Hungarian businessman — and good pal of Bernie’s — who promotes the Brazilian Grand Prix via

his company, International Publicity.

She met Bernie through the World Motor Sport Council where she regularly attended meetings, having already secured a place on the Brazilian Motor Sports Federation board.

They knew each other professionally for a few years — albeit at arm’s length — before Tamas invited her on a cruise around Croatia with Bernie and others in 2009.

Despite the near 50-year age gap, something about the billionaire Ecclestone appealed to Fabiana, and a match was made.

It’s not difficult to see what Bernie saw in her. In his biography of Bernie, Tom Bower describes Fabiana as “attractive, intelligent, modest and diplomatic” and “the peaceful company he had

previously lacked”.