MAX MOSLEY 1936-2021

Max Mosley, who has died of cancer aged 81, played a commanding role in the running of Formula One for more than 30 years.

With an Oxford degree in physics, multi-lingual and a qualified barrister, he abandoned political ambitions because, as the son of the 1930s British Fascist leader, he knew his name was an insuperable obstacle. Instead he had a few seasons’ racing in club events and F2. Then in 1969, with designer Robin Herd, he created March Engineering.

March fielded a GP team from 1970, and he began working with Brabham owner Bernie Ecclestone to organise the F1 teams into the Formula One Constructors’ Association (FOCA). With Mosley looking after the legal side FOCA became very powerful, confronting the traditional hierarchy of the governing body, FISA, to improve the teams’ income and get safety concerns properly heard.

In 1991, the poacher turned gamekeeper: Mosley offered himself as president of FISA, and was elected. In two years he was president of FISA’S parent body, the FIA, and he filled this role for 15 years.

In 2008 the News of the World claimed that Mosley had taken part in a sex party involving Nazi uniforms. The Nazi element was untrue and he sued the paper, not for libel but for invasion of privacy. He won the case.

Thereafter Mosley devoted his energies, and a large portion of his personal fortune, to promoting privacy legislation in the UK and Europe, successfully suing Google in France and Germany. When the phone-hacking scandal hit the News of the World, forcing the closure of the paper, he underwrote the court costs of the victims.

Mosley regarded as his greatest achievement the FIA’S European New Car Assessment Programme, EURONCAP. But his true legacy is that F1 today is infinitely more professional, and its cars and tracks far safer. Simon Taylor