Max Mosley is forced out of race by an old friend
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/formula_1/article6572022.ece
The tumultuous reign of Max Mosley as president of motor racing’s governing body came to an abrupt end yesterday when he was unceremoniously stripped of his power in a coup led by his old friend Bernie Ecclestone.
In a dramatic confrontation at the Paris headqarters of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Mr Ecclestone, 79, the billionaire promoter of Formula One, told Mr Mosley that his time was up. The autocrat who had reduced the pinnacle championship in world motorsport to chaos was gone.
In a deal that Mr Mosley, 69, tried to present as a personal triumph, he was removed from all influence over Formula One with immediate effect. Not only will he now not stand for re-election for a fourth term as FIA president in October, he will no longer run the sport from this morning, and he will not assume any other role in the FIA from which he could continue to influence affairs.
Mr Mosley had gone to Paris talking tough and making it clear that he might continue bossing one of the world’s richest sports for another four years. By mid-morning his 16-year reign was over and though he remains in office, he is without power.
Thus, in the end, it was not the disclosures in a Sunday newspaper last year about his appetite for sadomasochistic sex with prostitutes that brought him down but the confrontational way in which he was trying to run Formula One.
This had provoked a wholesale revolt by the teams against his rule. They were opposed to his attempt to impose a cap on their spending and they had made it clear that if he did not go, they would abandon Formula One and start a rival championship.
This provoked a severe case of the jitters in Mr Ecclestone and in the venture capital company he works for which owns 75 per cent of Formula One — CVC Capital Partners — and they decided that Mr Mosley would have to pay the price for his miscalculation.
His fall comes at the end of 16 months in the life of the son of the wartime Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, that has tested him to the limit. In March last year the News of the World published photographs of him taking part in an orgy with five prostitutes in a London “torture dungeon”. He then had to explain himself to Jean, his wife of 40 years, and to his two sons, Alexander and Patrick, neither of whom had any idea of his secret passion.
After resolutely refusing to stand down over what he argued was an entirely private matter, Mr Mosley fought back, leading a crusade for change in British privacy laws and reasserting his authority at the FIA. Then last month Alexander Mosley, who was a heroin addict, was found dead at his London flat after taking a drug overdose.
Through it all Mr Mosley had seemed almost bullet-proof and had tried to continue running motor sport in his own very particular style, barely taking time off even in the days after his son’s death. He appeared to see himself as unimpeachable.
His enemies, and they were legion among the teams taking part in Formula One, saw him as a dictator who imposed his will without consultation, who constantly changed the rules and who delighted in attacking those who tried to challenge him. He infamously ridiculed Sir Jackie Stewart, for example, an outspoken critic and a dyslexic, as a “certified half-wit” and only last weekend dismissed team leaders opposed to him as “loonies”. He was instrumental in ending the career of Ron Dennis, the former team principal of Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren Mercedes, and handing that team a world record fine of £50 million for cheating in 2007.
Mr Mosley’s view was that the teams were mere “garagists”, a bunch of self-important upstarts who should be treated with disdain bordering on contempt. He revelled in his role as supreme authority over Formula One and he put huge effort into building his powerbase within the FIA to ensure that he could not be deposed. Not content merely to administer the sport, Mr Mosley was a constant presence behind the scenes, manipulating and plotting and litigating against those who attacked him.
He “worked” the Formula One media and his personal spin-doctor, Richard Woods, was tireless in the pursuit of Mr Mosley’s interests.
Mr Mosley did not work alone. He was very much a part of a double act with Mr Ecclestone, something known within the Formula One paddock as the “Max and Bernie show”. Having become friends in the 1960s, when they were both involved in motorsport as not-very-good drivers and then team owners, they proved a formidable partnership. Mr Ecclestone applied his skills as promoter and Mr Mosley as lawyer and then rules chief after becoming FIA president in 1993. The relationship was far too close for many in the sport’s liking.
A feature of their hegemony was their extraordinary ability to extricate themselves from even the most apocalyptic of crises. A deal was always pulled out of the fire or opponents were persuaded to change their minds in spectacular fashion. Ferrari, for example, was famously lured away from a previous threatened breakaway by a deal under which the Italian team now earns more than any other in Formula One and gets more money for winning than any other team. In the end Max and Bernie always seemed to win.
Mr Mosley wanted to restrict teams to a basic budget of £30 million a year. But even though he allowed his initially simple and ambitious goal to be watered down in response to the objections of the teams, he seemed to be getting nowhere. It became clear that the teams led by an old foe, the president of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemolo, had had enough of him. Even though they wanted to cut spending themselves, they did not want any scheme that gave Mr Mosley a say in how they were running their businesses. They did not trust him. As one team principal put it: “We never want to be at the mercy of Max.”
The teams had one trump card up their sleeve and they played it beautifully — a breakaway series. When eight of the ten outfits on the Formula One grid announced their intention to set up a rival championship, Mr Mosley was in trouble. The breakaway included all the most famous names — teams and drivers — and Mr Ecclestone and CVC Capital could see that it was either a case of “Max goes”, or “Formula One falls to pieces”.
In the end Mr Ecclestone chose saving the sport over standing by his old mucker.
