Ed Gorman
Max is angry - toys and prams etc - and the sport is drawing breath. He believes that Fota have misrepresented the agreement he made with Luca and Bernie and now he is saying he is keeping his options open. In other words he might not go quietly after all. In fact, he could even stand again. That sounds familiar.
Max says Fota has been briefing incorrectly that Boeri will take over the running of Formula One until October, that Max will have no influence over the sport until then and that, when his current presidential term expires, he will leave the FIA. In an intemperate and revealing letter to Luca - revealing about Max’s personality, that is (and his obsession with the media and publicity) - he castigates the Ferrari president for apparently implying that Max is a dictator and he demands that Luca stop spreading falsehoods about him and makes a public apology.
The letter was leaked by Max’s office to all sorts of media including The Times. It ends with a chilling final thought, as follows: “However, 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.”
So what should we make of this? My first thought is, “get over it Max”. OK so maybe the reporting was not to your liking but the fact is you have lost this war and you do yourself no credit carrying on thrashing around like this. If people thought you were autocratic and arrogant and they could sympathise with the teams’ opposition to you before this outburst, this is only going to confirm them in their opinion.
Second, the sport has moved on and there is no way back. If Max tries to pull a fast one, the teams will reactivate the breakaway and will go for it, as one leading figure in Fota has put it, “full-bore.”
Third, Max’s office are trying to make a big play out of the fact that Fota is not attacking Max but the FIA and its much-cherished authority. As I have argued here already, the FIA’s authority, it’s great role in the history of mankind, is of little concern to anyone except the FIA. Max always uses this argument to justify his defence of his own interests and this is no exception. Today we can expect to see members of the World Motor Sport Council come out and say Fota cannot continue to try to take over the role of the FIA. They are also likely to be irritated at calls from Fota yesterday for a successor to Max who is “independent”. It’s none of your business, is their view.
That’s fine but, again, as we have said here before Formula One is more important than the FIA and the outcome of this row has proved that.
Finally, Max may have a point about the misreporting. But how it happened remains a mystery. Were the details that he objects so strongly to elements which the parties had agreed to keep secret? Or did Fota genuinely believe they were all going to be part of the deal to get rid of Max but, in the event, Luca failed to press them home?
