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Motor racing chief Max Mosley claims he is under pressure to stay on as head of Formula One’s governing body after opponents rushed to write his obituary following a peace deal last week.
“They made the mistake of dancing on my grave before I was buried,” the 69-year-old Briton told the Mail on Sunday newspaper in an interview.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) president suggested the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA), led by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, had made a serious miscalculation.
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“It’s no good the teams getting a PR agency to claim I am dead and buried when I am standing here as large as life. I am under pressure now from all over the world to stand for re-election,” he said.
“I do genuinely want to stop. But if there is going to be a big conflict with the car industry, for example, with the FOTA teams, then I won’t stop,” he added.
“I will do whatever I have to do. It’s not in my nature to walk away from a fight.” Guardian.co.uk
Mosley said he would not stand for re-election in October and looked forward to a quiet summer. It was understood that the FIA Senate, under Monaco’s Michel Boeri, would handle Formula One matters in the interim.
A day later, the FIA president suggested that the deal could collapse unless Montezemolo apologised for likening him to a dictator. Mosley also wrote to FIA members urging them to stand up to the teams and manufacturers.
While expressing anger and astonishment at Montezemolo’s comments, although he himself labelled some team bosses ‘loonies’ (lunatics) at the British Grand Prix, Mosley also dismissed the Italian.
“I don’t really expect Luca will apologise or withdraw in the way that he should,” he said of a foe, who has largely ignored the Briton’s recent statements.
“Yet, on the other hand, within the motor sport world nobody takes him seriously.
“He’s seen as what the Italians call a ‘bella figura’ (beautiful figure). He’s chairman of Fiat but the serious individual who runs it is Sergio Marchionne, and I don’t suppose he takes much notice of Luca.” Yahoo! Eurosport
But he claims, privately, that he had already divulged his intentions to stand down to the F1 rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone.
What hurt Mosley was the triumphalism of his opponents. ‘By going home to Italy and telling the Italian media that they had toppled the dictator, di Montezemolo has tried to make it sound like I sit here and just decide what’s going to happen,’ said Mosley. ‘It’s absolutely not true.
‘I can’t do anything unless the WMSC agree and there are 26 members, mostly presidents of important motor sport clubs from all over the world. All these rules that I am supposed to have dictated have been voted on by those people. To say that I run a dictatorship is nonsense.
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The problem, says Mosley, is that his rival’s words have been taken too seriously elsewhere. ‘When di Montezemolo comes out with things that are picked up internationally, when people in the UK, for example, read this, they tend to believe it,’ he said.
‘And when FOTA say all this nonsense about Boeri replacing me, that also tends to be believed. I think once we have all that put to bed and the teams come back to the deal we did, then I will be happy sticking with the deal we made. I am working on FIA matters from my office in Monaco. It is business as usual.’
Mosley claims to have received huge support from member clubs of the FIA, the constituency who saved his career last summer with a vote of confidence after his unconventional sex life was revealed by a newspaper.
Mosley says the clubs are interpreting the attack on him as an assault on their organisation. ‘Complete lies have been told,’ said Mosley. ‘That was obviously very annoying and not just for me.
‘It has given the impression to the member clubs of the FIA that the car industry had dictated who the president could be and what the president should do. That caused uproar. Once a year we have a general assembly where all 132 countries belonging to the FIA endorse what has been done.
‘If someone is unhappy with what has been done, they would say so and we’d have a vote. I don’t have the power to dictate. I only have the power to execute the decisions that the WMSC have taken.’ Daily Mail
