Auto racing boss Max Mosley dies

LONDON — Max Mosley, who shook off the stigma of his family’s links to fascism to become international motorsport’s top administrator and later made a stand as a privacy campaigner in response to tabloid stories about his sex life, has died. He was 81.

Friend Bernie Ecclestone, the former F1 chief executive, said Monday that Mosley died the previous evening. He did not disclose the cause of death.

“He was like family to me. We were like brothers. I am pleased in a way because he suffered for too long,” Ecclestone said.

As president of motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, from 1993-2009, the suave, Oxford Universityeducated Briton oversaw the stunning global spread of Formula One, with new races in Asia and the Middle East.

But he was also in charge at the time of the tragic death of star driver Ayrton Senna in 1994, multiple scandals and furious squabbling within the sport about its astronomic costs and the distribution of its massive revenues.

Mosley said his greatest achievement was making the dangerous sport safer after the death of Senna, Brazil’s beloved three-time world champion. Mosley also fought to cap costs and give the gas-guzzling sport a greener image by introducing biofuel technology.

But his life and the final year of his four consecutive terms as FIA president were turned upside down in 2008 when the now-defunct News of the World published secretly filmed video of

Mosley engaging in sex acts wearing a German Luftwaffe jacket.

Mosley sued the tabloid and London’s High Court found in his favor against News of the World, ruling that it breached his privacy. The judge ordered the tabloid to pay 60,000 pounds in damages to Mosley plus hefty legal costs.

Mosley’s lawyer, James Price, said his client’s life was “devastated by the reports. The humiliation is of the highest order.”

Mosley told the BBC that he regretted the impact on his wife, Jean, and family, saying: “I can’t imagine anything worse than being the son of somebody and seeing those sorts of pictures in the newspaper.”

His son, Alexander, died from a drugs overdose in 2009, aged 39, and Mosley said the scandal could have contributed.

Mosley resisted calls for his resignation from the FIA and comfortably won a confidence vote to see out his fourth term as president, supported by 103 of its 169 member federations.

The London-born Mosley got into motor racing through his wife and raced for Brabham and Lotus in Formula Two.

Mosley helped set up March Engineering, which competed in Formula One in the 1970s, and used his lawyer’s training to make his way up motorsport’s administrative ladder. In 1993, he was elected unopposed as FIA president, replacing Frenchman JeanMarie Balestre.

France awarded Mosley its prestigious Legion of Honor award in 2006 for his contribution to road safety and motorsport.