Mosley will step down to save Formula One

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS – FIA president Max Mosley reached a deal Wednesday to stop eight rebel Formula One teams forming a breakaway series and says he will not stand for re-election.

Mosley ceded to the Formula One Teams Association's insistence that a voluntary 40-million pound ($75.8 million Canadian) budget cap from next season would be scrapped.

Instead a watered down agreement over cost-cutting was agreed by Mosley and the FOTA members – Ferrari, McLaren, BMW Sauber, Renault, Toyota, Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Brawn GP.

"There will be no split. We have agreed to a reduction of costs," Mosley said. "There will be one F1 championship, but the objective is to get back to the spending levels of the early '90s within two years."

Mosley said the deal still maintains the "financial viability" of teams which he had been targeting with the initial cap. As part of the agreement, existing teams must help new outfits with their engines and chassis.

Mosley has been the president of the FIA, the international automobile federation which governs Formula One, since 1993. Despite his leadership style being criticized as too autocratic and being blamed by many of the teams for precipitating the split between FOTA and the FIA, Mosley announced over the weekend that he was seriously considering running for a fifth term.

"I will not be up for re-election; now we have peace," Mosley said at FIA's Paris headquarters.

"This for me is an enormous relief," he added referring to "personal difficulties" he has faced.

His son, Alexander Mosley, was found dead at his luxury apartment on May 5 after an accidental drug overdose.

The 69-year-old FIA president, the son of former British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, was at the centre of a media frenzy last year when a tabloid newspaper reported he took part in a sadomasochistic orgy with five prostitutes in London. A video of the incident was widely circulated on the Internet.

Mosley successfully sued the News of the World for invasion of privacy.

The episode brought calls for Mosley's ouster as FIA president, but he won an overwhelming vote of confidence to stay on.

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