It was Shakespeare who penned, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Truer words were never spoken and history is populated with examples of good-intentioned men doing evil once they have tasted power. The annals of Formula 1 are no different.

The sport has grown from a largely amateur affair to what is now a multi-billion dollar sports entertainment enterprise. Along the way some of Formula 1’s participants have become fantastically rich powerbrokers on the world stage. Certain of these powerbrokers have done better than others and today control the sport. Of course, I speak of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley who respectively, have gained a great deal of money and power from F1.

The contribution of both men must be acknowledged. They wrested the sport from the well attired polo club set and made it the professional motorsport showpiece it is today. That process began nearly 30 years ago but for the past 15 plus years, both have reigned unopposed, sharing near absolute power.

Increasingly its obvious that near absolute power is not enough. Yesterday, the FIA announced that it was replacing its independent race stewart, Tony-Scott Andrews who retired at the end of 2007, with three FIA nominated race stewarts. These ‘amateurs’ will come from various FIA affiliated national racing organizations.

To oversee the process and assist the nominated stewarts in their judgments, Max Mosley is assigning his official representative Alan Donnelly. Given the authority that Donnelly has in his role its not unimaginable that his guidance might carry considerable weight with the stewarts. Its also not a terribly large leap to imagine that Donnelly’s guidance is really the thinly disguised hand of the FIA President.

This reorganization of the race stewarts erodes the separation of powers (political and judicial) within the sports governing body.   Of course, the President of the FIA will point out that he has no influence over the decisions of the race stewarts - he doesn’t participate in the ‘independent’ committee.  He’s right of course, on paper he’s not part of the process.  But, one must be naive to believe this is true in practice.

Under Mosley, F1 is moving closer and closer to totalitarian rule.  The power that lies in the FIA Presidency today is as much or more than when Mosley came to office in 1991. Ironically, Mosley ran for the Presidency of FISA (eventually brought under the FIA umbrella in 1993) in response to political interference affecting a 1991 stewarts ruling.

“What happened to Ayrton Senna two years ago in Japan, disgusted me, […]That is when I realised that Fisa was not a fair organisation.”

Then FISA/FIA President, Jean-Marie Balestre was widely reported to have intervened to ensure that the race stewards disqualified Senna from the race (costing him the championship.)  Mosley campaigned on the basis that Balestre, who was also president of the FIA and of the Fédération Française du Sport Automobile, could not effectively manage all of these roles together. Mosley won by 43 votes to 29. *

18 years later, it’s all coming full circle.  The FIA President will once again have influence over not just the rulebook but how the rules will be interpreted and administered.  From the idealistic outsider who rose to power on a platform of fairness, Max has become of very thing he campaigned to defeat - a tyrant.

* From Wikipedia

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