"M" is for "Max"

There's been a lot of knocking Max Mosley over the past couple of years, and it seems to be coming to a head in the current argument between the Formula One Teams Association and the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile of which he is, it should be noted, the elected president. As a motor car driver, this body represents, at an international level, the interests of all the national drivers' associations, and so, ultimately represents me.

But in all the criticism of Mosley, little has been said about his own history and interests in motoring and in motorsport. And this history is quite telling in the current dispute. This is a man who, seeking to get away from his family name, became interested in the sport quite by chance when he was invited by his girlfriend at university to a Silverstone race half a century ago. In contrast to the political scene in which he had dabbled with his father he was an unknown and nobody cared what his surname was.

This is a man who was driving in the race that killed Jim Clarke who decided to turn to building, racing and selling cars because both of his team mates had been killed in one season and he knew something had to be done about car safety. I had no idea until yesterday that the "M" in "March Engineering" is in fact "Mosley" - and I probably ought to have known that as my firm in the eighties acted as its broker on its rather ill-fated floatation on the stock exchange!

It's interesting that Williams are one of the two teams to have committed to next year so far - Frank Williams and Max Mosley go back a long way - it was Frank who built the cars in which Max raced all those years ago. Mosley knows what it means to be a small team fighting the giant car manufacturers, finding ways of making it easier for people to get started in racing at the top levels (he pioneered teams renting cars for a season for example). He has been ostracized by the big manufacturers before when he stood up for the little constructers and customer teams.

The FIA is of course about more than motorsport: Mosely says his greatest achievement as head of the FIA has been beefing up new car safety rules for all of us - the Euro-NCAP testing, and for racing drivers - the HANS neck brace for example, and whose avowed intention for the past few years has been to try to make F1 more relevant to us ordinary motorists by trying to get them to focus a bit more or development of technologies that can be of use in our cars to save fuel, increase safety or drivability and yes, performance in a lower energy future.

Whilst I am a little uncomfortable about the dominance particularly of Bernie Ecclestone and the various deals that have been done and threats that have been made over the years to get his and Mosley's way - usually it has to be said in defense of the sport in the face of political interference such as rulings by the EU and so on, I am on balance even more uncomfortable about a scenario in which the competitors control the lot, from the rules, to the intellectual property rights, right down to who may compete. Especially one dominated by the big motor manufacturers with their almost bottomless pits of money in good years.

It would be a little like putting Dwaine Chambers in charge of the athletics doping board! No, Max and Bernie's overall argument is correct - that the different aspects of the competition ought to be handled by specialist bodies. There may be quibbles about the immediate issue of how to reduce expenditure and so on, but I do hope FOTA see sense and find a way to reconcile their position with the FIA.

I never really thought I would find myself defending Max Mosley or Bernie Ecclestone to be honest. I had fallen for much of the popular image of them as autocratic oligarchs running a private empire. But let's face it, Mosley has been repeatedly elected by the drivers' representative bodies from around the world, even when it looked like he was becoming a public embarrassment for them over his private life last year. I guess it's a case of who you believe has the best interests of the most number of people involved in motorsport at heart - and on reflection I think that has to be the FIA rather than the cartel of global car manufacturers.