Sir Jackie hits back at Mosley's personal attack

Published on Saturday 31 May 2008 20:01

THERE HAVE been no more trenchant critics of shamed Formula One boss Max Mosley than Sir Jackie Stewart.

The three-times world champion doesn't have a vote at Tuesday's extraordinary meeting of motorsport's governing body in Paris, but if he did there is no doubt he would cast it to end Mosley's tenure as president of FIA, a position the controversial Englishman has held since 1993 and which he is due to relinquish in October next year.

Stewart is one of the few men in Formula One with no vested interest and therefore one of the most accurate barometers of opinion within the sport. It was his revelation this week that he has bet $100 on Mosley still being in a job by the end of the week ("a lot of money for a Scotsman" quips the multi-millionaire) that brought wider attention to the very real possibility that the FIA president might survive. The rest of us presumed he was a goner.

But how can Mosley possibly keep his job? Virtually every team in Formula One has made it clear that they would like him to resign, as have driving associations representing hundreds of millions of motorists around the globe. Mosley has been snubbed by governments and heads of state ever since the News of the World revealed his curious sexual peccadilloes to a slack-jawed world, and when he finally turned up in Monaco last week there was bedlam as dignitaries, royalty and the CEOs of multi-national companies dispatched "spotters" to ensure they avoided the FIA president. When rumours swept the Principality that he was planning to attend the post-race gala dinner, Prince Albert, Lewis Hamilton and winning constructors all failed to show up.

Even his close friend and long-time partner in crime Bernie Ecclestone, who initially dismissed Mosley's difficulties as an irrelevance, has performed a stunning volte face and spoken openly of his desire to see the Englishman step down. When the most powerful man in Formula One calls for your head and says that "if Max wants me to be the enemy he should be very careful because if he makes me an enemy I could make sure he never whips anybody again," then surely your time is up.

Not necessarily, says Stewart. "The problem is that some people are concerned this won't be a secret ballot," he says. "Not one F1 team has said anything publicly even though privately they're all saying he has to go. They're all scared that if they do say anything and he remains in power then they may be penalised. They may be right to worry: if I was a team principal running an independent team, I might worry that my entry (Formula One licence] might not be accepted in future."

Mosley, also manoeuvring for the right to effectively appoint his successor, wrote to all 222 of the motoring clubs that are members of the FIA last week, effectively saying that they had to vote for him because there was no-one else who could hold the organisation together. Stewart has long argued the opposite, pushing for FIA to be run along conventional corporate lines with strong corporate governance and transparency. Rather than a debate, his attacks on FIA's arcane organisation drew a boorishly patronising putdown from Mosley.

"Dear old Jackie, he knows nothing about sports governance," said the FIA president. "Because he never stops talking, he doesn't know much about anything, actually. He just talks."

It is, says Ecclestone, a typically aggressive Mosley ploy when attacked. "Max is blowing a bit of a smokescreen to stop all the other nonsense," said Ecclestone. "Poor old Max, I feel sorry for him. Everybody's wrong except him. Everybody was involved in the orgy except him. He is just lashing out at anything he can. What he says in the letter is wrong. He is saying 'You have to keep me, I'm the only one who can do the job'. What Max is saying to the clubs is that they are idiots, that not one of them could do the job. I'd be insulted if I were them."

Stewart refuses to allow himself to be sidetracked, however, and continually returns to the central point: that Mosley is now so damaged that he can no longer effectively represent the FIA. Were he the CEO of any other company, says Stewart, he would have had to resign immediately.

"Were he an honourable man he would already have resigned because this is a bridge too far," says Stewart. "He accepts that this (orgy] happened yet he doesn't accept that it infringes upon his ability to do his job. How can he say that? No-one wants to see him! He wasn't wanted in Monaco, Bahrain or Spain.

"How can he go to the European Parliament to make Formula One's case, or speak to heads of state? He can't. No head of a multi-national company, for whom image is everything, would be seen talking to him or meeting him and there's a big risk of some major companies no longer being involved in motorsport if this continues. The damage he's doing to Formula One is considerable. The bottom line is whatever argument he presents he cannot possibly perform his functions as FIA president."

Plain speaking is not a quality Mosley cherishes in others and he has responded to attacks on his credibility by seeking to denigrate or punish his detractors. Mosley has sought to marginalise Stewart, saying that: "It's annoying that some of the sponsors listen to him because he's won a few championships, but nobody else in formula one does – not the teams, not the drivers. He's a figure of fun among drivers. He goes round dressed up as a 1930s music hall man. He's a certified halfwit."

Stewart takes that as a reference to his dyslexia, saying the slight speaks volumes for Mosley. "Those sort of comments show him up," says Stewart. "They prove that he's intelligent but not always smart. Once upon a time I'd have been horrified by him talking about my dyslexia, but not now. So what if I can't recite the alphabet?

"I did think about suing him and was told I had a cast iron case, but it was so petty and I didn't want to come down to his level. What it showed was that his decision-making, especially when he's in a rage, is worryingly faulty."

Mosley and Stewart are direct contemporaries, two 68-year-old men who have known each other since the mid-sixties. Over the years Stewart believes he has had plenty of reasons to question Mosley's decision-making skills.

Was there, I ask Stewart, any point at which he got on with Mosley? "I first came across him in the mid-to-late sixties," says the Scot. "All I'll say is that there are some people you instinctively have confidence in and others that you don't." No prizes for guessing which category Mosley comes into, or which way Jackie Stewart would vote were he in Paris on Tuesday.