Mosley pleads for job

Max Mosley is digging in [GALLO/GETTY]

FIA president Max Mosley believes the sport’s governing body could lose control of Formula One if he steps down as a result of his involvement in a sex scandal.

Mosley, who could be forced to resign at a special general assembly in Paris on June 3, wrote in a letter that made public that the ongoing negotiations for the controlling rights to F1 will be undermined, and perhaps lost, if he is forced to resign.

“It would be irresponsible, even a breach of duty to walk away from a number of negotiations currently under way, all of which are of fundamental importance to the FIA,” Mosley wrote in the letter addressed to the presidents of national motoring federations.

Caught in the act

The 68-year-old Mosley has been trying to save his job since a British tabloid reported that he was involved in sex acts with five prostitutes in a scenario that involved Nazi role-playing.

Mosley’s fourth term as president of FIA runs until October 2009, and his letter addressed to the people who will decide his fate in about two weeks is the Englishman’s latest attempt to stay in office.

“We are now dealing with a sport involving billions of dollars and interests that would like nothing better than to remove the FIA from the championship entirely,” he said.

FIA and rights holder Formula One Management are renegotiating the commercial rights to F1, and Mosley is afraid that any instability in the presidency would give F1 Management, owned by Bernie Ecclestone, the chance “to take over Formula One completely.”

“I do not believe the FIA should agree to this,” Mosley wrote.

“To do so would be to abandon core elements of FIA’s patrimony.”

Such a scenario would keep FIA from being able to protect traditional Grands Prix, leave it in a weaker financial state and put it at risk of losing its control as an international regulator, Mosley believes.

“We should only sign a new Concorde Agreement if it reinforces the authority of the FIA and deals properly with the major financial crisis which appears imminent in Formula One,” Mosley said about F1’s current governing document.

Standing firm

Mosley asked the presidents to stick with him to keep the FIA’s bargaining position from being undermined.

“If we are to have a smooth transition we need to wait until 2009, when there will be a general election with new presidential candidates, each putting forward a list built on consensus for the approval of the F1 membership as a whole,” Mosley said.

“I do not wish to resign unless a majority of the FIA membership wish me to do so.”

Mosley did promise to leave most of FIA’s public acts to the two deputy presidents should he remain.

Mosley will be at next weekend’s Monaco GP but skipped the preceding Turkish and Spanish GPs after the Crown Prince of Bahrain asked him not to attend the Bahrain GP in April.
 
On Sunday, British media reported that the wife of an MI5 agent was involved in the News of the World story that exposed the sex scandal.

Mosley has sued the British tabloid.