A political creature

profile Max Mosley David Tremayne studies the antecedents and aspirations of the man who runs Formula One

"IN HIS first year, he left well alone; in the second, he outlawed active suspension and various electronic systems to make racing more affordable for everyone; in the third, he set motorsport back on another expensive course with a knee-jerk reaction to the accidents in Imola and Monaco. A president should be consistent in his actions. If he isn't, then he's a poor politician, and being president of the FIA [the world governing body of motorsport] is a political post."

These words, spoken by an owner of one of the smaller teams in Formula One, may be harsh, but they are reflective of the mood within the sport in response to the dictates of Max Mosley, the president in question.

One year ago, motor racing was about to suffer one of its blackest weekends, when a series of unrelated incidents resulted in the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the San Marino Grand Prix, injured other drivers, mechanics and spectators, and roasted the sport on the spit of public opprobrium. Twelve months on, though sorrow for the fallen remains, things are back on an even keel, largely through the stewardship of the man whose father, Sir Oswald, was himself no stranger to vilification.

With Max Mosley, you need to consider the father to understand the son. Leader of the British Union of Fascists in the Thirties, Oswald Mosley was incarcerated in Brixton during the Second World War, for opposing battle with his beloved Germany. Max's mother Diana, one of the Mitford sisters, was herself locked up in Holloway only months after his birth in 1940. When their passports were finally restored to them after the war the family sailed away on their yacht, first to Portugal, thence by a roundabout route to settle in Ireland. Mosley's education was necessarily cosmopolitan; from French and German seats of learning he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a physics degree before being called to the Bar.

Mosley raced, modestly, against Jim Clark and Graham Hill in the late Sixties, then with a group of others founded the ambitious March company. In its first full year, it staggered the racing world by making cars for almost every formula, including Formula One.

It was his work behind the scenes that counted for most, however, for when the war between the constructors, Foca, and the FIA (then called Fisa) peaked in 1980, it was he, as the Foca president Bernie Ecclestone's legal sounding-board, who penned much of the Concorde agreement by which Formula One is now governed.

When he succeeded the intemperate and chauvinistic Jean-Marie Balestre as FIA president in 1991, some saw it as the pinnacle of his career. Others, however, merely judged it a stepping-stone to his real ambition. Being Sir Oswald's son ruled out any career in British politics for Mosley; but Europe offered something much greater. Few seriously doubt Mosley's aspirations in the European Parliament.

By any standards, 1994 was a tough year to be in office. As well as the allegations of cheating that surrounded Benetton, it was the first time in eight years that death had gatecrashed the Formula One circus. With Senna's accident the glare of the world stayed on the sport. Not since the mayhem of Indianapolis in 1973 had it come under such unblinking scrutiny. For a man with Mosley's long-term pretensions, failure to control the situation was unthinkable.

Karl Wendlinger's accident at Monaco was followed by an extraordinary conference at which Mosley effectively challenged the teams to come up with dramatic changes for 1995. Even Ecclestone - to many the real tsar of Formula One - is said to have been taken aback by his audacity. For Mosley it was a chance to prove his political skills. Inevitably, his critics accused him of basking in the spotlight.

"Those changes were the minimum needed to keep Formula One at its present level in the sense of maintaining the participation of the big companies, both from the automobile business and outside," Mosley insists with the smoothness of the consummate politician. He says international concerns came close to pulling out, and that he needed to demonstrate he was in control and able to react quickly.

"I think we had an amount of unnecessary controversy, but there was no knee-jerk reaction," he added. "We only got into a position where we had to react when it became clear that the whole basis of Formula One was under threat.

"There was also an interesting phenomenon when we started getting applications, on the Thursday evening in Monaco, from political journalists in Paris, Rome, places like that, who had no interest in the racing at all. It was becoming the great attack on Formula One. We had 80 MPs who signed a motion in the Italian Parliament that Formula One should be banned in Italy. We had the beginnings of trouble in Brussels and similar reactions in other countries; a groundswell questioning whether Formula One should be allowed. Whether we really knew what we were doing and were in control. Because although we all knew that such events could happen at any time, and that the only odd thing was that we got so many in one weekend, everyone else, even quite intelligent people outside, were saying: `You've had five serious accidents at Imola; there must be a connection, there must be a common factor.' And we know there wasn't, and one can demonstrate that quite easily, of course, but that was the conventional wisdom outside."

It was a time when everybody had an opinion about Formula One, regardless of their level of interest or understanding. "That's the price you pay for having a very high public profile," says Mosley, adding with a deprecating smile: "And generally the less they know, the stronger the opinion."

For the 1995 season came reduced engine capacity (from 3.5 to 3 litres), stronger chassis structures, revised aerodynamics to reduce cornering ability and further slow the cars down, and even more severe mandatory crash tests. Such decisions were short-term solutions; at the same time, he set up a safety investigation group, and he has since expressed great confidence that "enormous progress" is being made.

"It's the first time there's been a really scientific look at this," he explained. "I think when they have finished we are going to have an enormous step forward in safety. There may even be things in there that apply to road cars, and because we also have a lot of discussions in Brussels on road car safety, it's all very relevant."

This is his ticket to the European Parliament, as the FIA expands its spheres of influence beyond just sport. "If you want to know what happens in a road accident you'd have to instrument thousands of cars, whereas if you come into racing you don't have to instrument very many to get a lot of results, because you know there will be accidents. I think one could ask why all that wasn't done before, but the answer really is that the culture in Formula One before the accidents was fairly hostile to any substantial improvements for safety."

Mosley has a point; Formula One had come to believe that it had refused death an entry ticket. Now there is world-wide co-operation, from safety bodies, drivers and teams.

"Go back 25 years," Mosley suggests. "It was completely accepted that there were large parts of every circuit where if anything went wrong you'd be extremely lucky not to hurt yourself. Since then, those parts have shrunk, and we are now trying to eliminate them."

Mosley recently slipped his head into a noose when he said: "You've got to set yourself an objective, which is that you can't hurt yourself in a Formula One car. Now you probably never will actually achieve that, but I think it's quite realistic to say it's going to be quite difficult to hurt yourself."

Mosley doesn't need the FIA presidency. He is, as they say, nicely fixed, even though he is not, contrary to popular opinion, the bene- ficiary of royalties from aunt Nancy Mitford's novels. But he enjoys it, as one might enjoy a game of chess. Tellingly, he once told me with a smile that robbed the words of any offence: "The art of this job is to appear to be a gentleman while being completely self-serving."

Sir Oswald Mosley educated Max and his brother Alexander "to make them good Europeans". And though father and son have been shunned by the political machine in the country of their birth, Max Mosley may yet find a way to avenge family honour.

For an urbane and ambitious Briton, a decidedly European future beckons.