A month short of his 70th birthday, he looked extremely fit and relaxed, not having a full work schedule any more. He ate sparingly, a salmon tartare, one glass of Sancerre and an espresso.

He said that he was planning to move back to London in April, as his need to be in Monaco was solely linked to his FIA work. I asked him if he would be a back seat driver in the new Jean Todt regime and he said that his contact would be minimal. He doesn’t plan to attend any races.

As an ex president he is entitled to a seat on the FIA Senate, but he says that he did not attend the last Senate meeting and he has no plans to be involved beyond being on the end of a telephone if new president Jean Todt wants his opinion. So far it seems that Todt has canvassed his view on some subjects, but Mosley reckons that these calls will decline in frequency as his knowledge becomes less current. He certainly doensn’t look or sound inclined to be a back-seat driver.

It was a very informal get together, largely off the record and Mosley didn’t have any particular agenda beyond wanting to make it clear that he was not pushed out of his job by FOTA last summer as part of the peace deal over the breakaway, as Luca di Montezemolo said at the time. This seems to be something he doesn’t want to have in his legacy and it seems to be something he takes exception to. His agreement with Jean Todt, he revealed today, was that in 2005 he would hand over to the Frenchman, like Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, but then Todt accepted the job of General Manager at Ferrari, which meant Mosley had to stay on until 2009.

He says that the proof that he planned to stand down in October 2009 is an entry for Who’s Who he submitted in April 2009, which said that he was FIA president until October 2009. Apparently, due to publishing deadlines and in agreement with the publishers, it is common practice to put confidential future information like that in submissions.

Although he said he had nothing left that he wanted to achieve in the sport and no scores to settle, that doesn’t mean he won’t be making mischief from the sidelines. Naturally we kept coming back to the outburst from Ferrari on their website yesterday in which the ‘Horse Whisperer’ accused Mosley of waging a ‘holy war’ against the F1 teams, manufacturers in particular. He said he found the whole thing quite amusing but hinted that the team had opened a can of worms here and that he had not planned to say anything rude about them before now, but that they have fired the first shot with this attack. He described Ferrari as a middle aged woman who is jealous of the attention new beautiful women around her are getting! He also said that the comments about Lotus and Virgin ‘limping’ into F1 and implying the new teams are a shambles, was rich given that Ferrari sent one of their cars out of the pits with a fuel hose attached in Singapore 2008.

On the subject of the new teams he is pleased that there is new blood in F1 and regrets the problems of USF1 and Campos. At the time of the assessment of new entries he insists that both places were visited regularly and financial checks carries out by Deloitte and by CVC’s finance experts. As for what happens next, he thinks there will be a merger between USF1 and Campos.

This would leave an open 13th entry, but he reminded us that for Stefan GP to get it, all the teams need to agree. I know for a fact, speaking to Ferrari this week, that they will not agree to that, as long as disgraced former McLaren designer Mike Coughlan is working for the team.

He spoke a lot about Flavio Briatore, much of it was well off the record, but he said that the idea of previous FIA punishments being rescinded such as the $100m fine for McLaren, is nonsense as McLaren were licence holders, the problem procedurally with the ban on Briatore. He said that without Pat Symonds making a confession, the original hearing might not have convicted the perpetrators of the Crashgate offences. He also said he was confident, if not 100% so, that Fernando Alonso was not in on the plot. He bases this on the fact that the investigators are experienced at examining witnesses and they were convinced Alonso was not lying.

Much of his time lately has been spent on his ongoing fight to change the privacy laws and he hopes that he will succeed in Strasbourg in getting some kind of law whereby newspapers must front up people they are about to expose and allow a judge to decide if publication is in the public interest or should be stopped by an injunction.

Meanwhile the FIA has reiterated that Briatore is still subject to the sanction banning him from managing drivers, which puts Red Bull’s Mark Webber in a tricky position.

Photo: Darren Heath

In the Telegraph he added, “Remember, the court did not find that he was not guilty. They just didn’t like the procedure we used. But it’s a very preliminary judgement. I think the FIA should appeal the judgement because I think it is seriously flawed in a number of areas.

“Aspects of it are just extraordinary. (Pat) Symonds actually admitted in writing that he was guilty and yet they found in his favour. But that’s only because they are not looking at the substance, they are just looking at the procedure.”

Mosley also dislike the French courts’ assertion that he had a conflict of interests and had pursued a vendetta against Briatore. He said that, “This was all invented to distract attention from the fact he committed the worst example of cheating in the history of sport.”

Mosley’s intervention and the tone of it are very interesting. He is no longer the FIA president – Jean Todt is – and yet he is speaking as if he still were. He appears to be speaking on behalf of the FIA when he talks about the points of principle which are very important to him. But his main motivation for speaking out is the personal criticism, which both Briatore and the court have made of him.

Todt had Mosley’s full support in his candidacy, but he also made it clear that in office he will be his own man. He knew that Mosley would do this interview, sanctioned it even, but it has created a confusion. Who is running the show? There is a risk so early in Todt’s presidency that this episode could be construed as confirming many people’s fears; that Mosley is driving the FIA from the back seat. Mosley still talks of a “handover period” in the presidency and clearly he feels that this is ongoing.

The FIA seem quite calm about this today. Mosley felt he had to intervene, whereas Todt has kept in the background, communicating only by means of an official FIA statement on the day of the verdict. This is likely to be the tone of his presidency and it is also unlikely that Mosley will intervene again in this way, on what appears to be an FIA remit, unless there is some personal angle specific to him. His ongoing role is as a member of the FIA Senate, nothing more.

The FIA has three options now in dealing with Briatore; appeal against the verdict, reconvene the world council or take the case to the new disciplinary court which Todt is planning to introduce. I can’t see the need to appeal, as they can achieve what they want through internal changes without dragging the case on in public.

This verdict, which was a shock to the FIA, will force them to make some changes so that they have some authority over third parties. They can change the statutes so that the FIA can ban non licence holders, they can introduce licences for key men, as I suggested in a post the other day. All options are open and they may well pursue a combination of them.

In the mean time, the FIA confirmed that Briatore is still barred from managing drivers. the Italian said to Gazzetta dello Sport yesterday that he still had his management business. This was not part of the court’s verdict and as far as the FIA are concerned, the sanction handed down in September stands and any Briatore managed driver applying for a superlicence will be turned down. This affects Mark Webber, but not Heikki Kovalainen, who has left the Briatore stable.

Drivers normally apply for their superlicences around the start of February.

As you can imagine they feel more than a little vindicated by this, as they have been warning for some time that the sport had become ‘unsustainable’ due to high costs and needed to be protected from manufacturers who come and go when it suits them.

Ironically the costs are now set to come down dramatically, so arguably they are not the main driver behind this withdrawal.

FIA president Max Mosley had quite a good relationship with some members of the BMW board and always said that he felt their participation in future could not be guaranteed despite what team principal Mario Theissen might have said.

Here’s the FIA statement in full:

“The FIA regrets the announcement of BMW’s intended withdrawal from Formula One but is not surprised by it.

It has been clear for some time that motor sport cannot ignore the world economic crisis.

Car manufacturers cannot be expected to continue to pour large sums of money into Formula One when their survival depends on redundancies, plant closures and the support of the taxpayer.

This is why the FIA prepared regulations to reduce costs drastically. These measures were needed to alleviate the pressure on manufacturers following Honda’s withdrawal but also to make it possible for new teams to enter.

Had these regulations not been so strongly opposed by a number of team principals, the withdrawal of BMW and further such announcements in the future might have been avoided.

Nevertheless, as a result of a sustained cost-cutting campaign by the FIA, new measures are in the process of being agreed which should make it easier for new teams to enter and enable existing ones to participate on much reduced budgets.

It is no secret that these measures do not go as far as the FIA would have liked but a compromise was needed in the interests of harmony in the sport. Hopefully it will be enough to prevent further withdrawals and provide a solid foundation for Formula One.

As the guardian of the sport, the FIA is committed to ensuring that Formula One remains financially sustainable for all competing teams and it will always act to ensure that this remains the case. “

Max Mosley has reacted angrily to the tone of messages coming out of FOTA and about what he sees as misleading briefings to the media. Having cast his eye through the morning’s papers, some of which we reviewed here on JA on F1, he sent off an angry letter to FOTA prior to their meeting in Bologna,

“Given your and FOTA’s deliberate attempt to mislead the media, I now consider my options open. At least until October, I am president of the FIA with the full authority of that office.

“After that it is the FIA member clubs, not you or FOTA, who will decide on the future leadership of the FIA.”

Mosley is not saying that he’s changing his mind about standing again in October, but he is saying that FOTA should be careful and treat the FIA with the respect it claimed to have for it in closing the deal.

Mosley is furious with the tone of messages like Luca di Montezemolo’s jibe about no more ‘dictators’. He is also angry that FOTA representatives have claimed that FIA Senate president Michel Boeri is now in change of F1, rather than that the Senate itself, of which he is, and will remain, a part. He has also bridled at suggestions that he was forced out of office.

“We made a deal yesterday in Paris to end the recent difficulties in Formula 1. A fundamental part of this was that we would both present a positive and truthful account to the media.

“I was therefore astonished to learn that FOTA has been briefing the press that Mr Boeri has taken charge of Formula 1, something which you know is completely untrue; that I had been forced out of office, also false; and, apparently, that I would have no role in the FIA after October, something which is plain nonsense, if only because of the FIA statutes.

“Furthermore, you have suggested to the media that I was a ‘dictator’, an accusation which is grossly insulting to the 26 members of the World Motor Sport Council who have discussed and voted all the rules and procedures of Formula 1 since the 1980s, not to mention the representatives of the FIA’s 122 countries who have democratically endorsed everything I and my World Motor Sport Council colleagues have done during the last 18 years.”

Mosley makes it clear that he wants them to change their tone and be more respectful,
“You must correct the false statements which have been made and make no further such statements. You yourself must issue a suitable correction and apology at your press conference this afternoon.”

No such apology has been forthcoming so far.

It’s hard to imagine that the situation will return to what we had prior to Wednesday’s meeting, but Mosley’s pride has been hurt and FOTA know that.

There is no need to be provocative, they have what they wanted and Mosley is not staying on after October. But clearly they couldn’t resist it. In Italy in particular, Montezemolo is being painted as St George, who slayed the dragon.