by Max Mosley
Thus the FIA’s sporting division, the CSI, was technically just one of the FIA’s five commissions. However, despite the importance of the FIA’s general motoring commissions in the first half of the 20th century, by 1979 the Commission Sportive Internationale, or CSI, was by far the most important part of the FIA. The commissions dealing with everyday motoring still existed but had become more or less moribund. Even the Customs Commission had lost a lot of its carnet business to a rival organisation, the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme, to which all the major clubs also belonged. Several big clubs with no involvement in motor sport, like the British AA and the Dutch ANWB, were AIT only.
Under the CSI, there were a number of sporting sub-commissions. These dealt with different forms of racing, rallies, circuits, the scheduling of international events, karting, historic racing cars and so on. As noted in chapter 12, soon after his election Balestre persuaded the FIA to change the name of the CSI to Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, or FISA. This, as he intended, gave the illusion that FISA was an international sports federation like any other, but in reality it was still just a commission of the FIA. When Balestre became president of the FIA itself in 1985, he retained his presidency of FISA. This caused him problems later, as described in chapter 17.
This remained the structure until 1993 when I was elected president of the FIA (after two years as president of FISA). I then proposed a new constitution to the FIA General Assembly, giving sport and the non-sporting side equal status.
The new structure looked like this:
FEDERATION INTERNATIONALE de L’AUTOMOBILE
Having made these changes, we began the revival of the non-sporting side, as explained in chapters 31 and 32.
The evolution of international motor sport
The FIA was founded in 1904 by the national motoring clubs in 13 countries. Apart from the need for internationally co-ordinated lobbying on behalf of their motorist members, the clubs realised that, with significant and growing motor sport activity, there had to be internationally agreed technical rules – engine size, weight, dimensions and so forth – if there were to be international competitions. Otherwise you would have cars built to completely different specifications competing against one another, making competition largely meaningless.
How a competition was to be run in each country was left almost entirely to its national motor sport authority but, at least after 1904, the competing cars in a given category would now be built to the same regulations.
For international championships, there were similar but not necessarily identical rules as to how the competition would be run in different countries, but generally the national authority decided the non-technical questions, including schedules, race or rally distances, categories of car allowed to compete and so on.
Early on, the members of the FIA agreed an International Sporting Code to deal with the basic rules for international competitions, including such things as procedures for rule changes, protests and appeals. Modified and expanded, it survives to this day. The FIA now has more than 135 member countries with some 230 clubs, although some are purely motoring organisations with no motor sport involvement.
Apart from this minimal international supervision, each national motor sport authority was sovereign in its territory. As the FIA’s official motor sport rule book rather quaintly put it back in 1969:
The sporting power entrusted to the FIA as regards motoring sport originated in the uniting of the powers detained in their respective countries by the ACNs. This power is therefore a common property.
(The official language of the FIA has always been French, hence this rather strange English translation.)
By the time I became involved in motor sport 62 years after the FIA was founded, it had become universally recognised as the regulatory body for all international motor sport. Its position was reinforced by the fact that, in many countries, its member organisation was recognised by law as the sole national motor sport authority.
In each country, the ACN or ‘Automobile Club Nationale’ was the body that had overall charge of motor sport and issued competition licences, including licences to compete internationally. In some countries, the ACN would delegate its sporting authority to a specialised body, the so-called ‘Association Sportive Nationale’ or ASN. Although there is often more than one FIA member organisation in a country, only one FIA member is recognised in each country as the national sporting authority.
The FIA was therefore effectively a forum in which the different countries, represented by ACNs and ASNs, agreed the international motor sport rules. Formula One, for example, started off as a set of technical regulations for single-seat racing cars internationally agreed in 1948 by the ACNs and ASNs within the FIA. The same was later true for Formula Two and Formula Three.
Technical regulations for an international competition might also be devised by a commercial entity – for example, Formula Renault by the eponymous car company – and then submitted to the FIA for approval via the ACN or ASN of the organising company’s country. Technical regulations for purely national competitions were not the concern of the FIA and could be different in each country.
All international races were subject to the above-mentioned International Sporting Code and still are to this day. Disputes were settled by stewards appointed by the country where the competition took place (and in some cases by the FIA) with a right of appeal to the FIA’s International Court of Appeal if more than one nationality was involved in the dispute.
In this way, international events were organised and managed by the ACN or ASN, the national sporting authority in each country under the ultimate authority of the FIA. However, the commercial rights to events on the FIA calendar belonged in each case to the promoter of the event. The rights to commercial series like Formula Renault are governed by contracts between the organising company and the race promoters. The company would often pay the promoter to include the race in its programme. These commercial arrangements were not the concern of the FIA. Its role was entirely supervisory – its function was to ensure the rules were observed in international events and settle disputes of a sporting nature.
Licences to compete internationally were issued to both drivers and teams by their national sporting authority. Surprisingly, there were no international standards and the experience necessary to gain the right to compete in an international event anywhere in the world varied widely. When I was racing in the 1960s, the RAC, the UK’s national motor sport authority, would give you an international licence once you had raced in 12 club events without incident. You could then race in Formula One if you could get hold of a car.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that the FIA, under pressure from FOCA and the drivers, required a certain minimum level of experience for Formula One drivers and began to issue the so- called super licence. In other forms of racing, international licences issued by an ACN (or ASN) continued to suffice. The licensing and rules for purely local or national competitions are still entirely under the control of the ACN in each country.
As recently as 1969, the FIA’s International Sporting Code was a small publication intended to fit in a pocket. It was even padded out with pictures of cars and drivers, advertisements, lists of circuits, addresses of racing car manufacturers and all the ACNs. The rules set out in the code were minimal. Almost everything was left to the ACNs, who would lay down detailed regulations for each international event in accordance with the code and send them to the FIA for approval three months in advance.
For major events like Formula One, the promoter was very often the ACN or ASN itself. Motoring clubs, too, sometimes own international races. For example, the Le Mans 24-hour race is owned by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, an important French regional club. As the promoter, the ACO owns the television rights, the circuit advertising, all the ancillary rights (such as allowing a sponsor to have people in promotional livery on the starting grid, and so on) as well as the right to accept or reject an entry and charge
a competitor an entry fee.
A promoter wishing to run an international event – meaning one open to competition licence-holders from another country – would ask its ACN or ASN (if the promoter was not itself the relevant national sporting authority) to apply to put it on the FIA’s international calendar drawn up by the FIA’s Calendar Commission. Inclusion on the calendar publicised the event for the benefit of potential competitors but, more importantly, the commission would ensure that there were not two international events for the same kind of car on the same day. There were also rules to stop big events falling on the same weekend and conventions for determining priority if two promoters asked for the same date.
As the FIA was a federation of national motor sport authorities (ACNs and ASNs), it was they who provided the membership of the Calendar Commission and decided the calendar of international events. The FIA charged a modest calendar fee for each of these and that was the extent of its commercial involvement.
In time, championships began to emerge. For example the Formula One World Championship for drivers began in 1950 (the Constructors’ Championship started in 1958 as a ‘cup’). Any promoter could decide to run a Formula One race at any time and the FIA would put it on the international calendar provided certain basic requirements were met. But the event would not necessarily be part of the Formula One World Championship. In 1969, for example, in addition to the 11 events making up the Formula One World Championship, there were three non-championship Formula One events in the UK – the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, the International Trophy at Silverstone and the Gold Cup at Oulton Park – plus a non-championship race, the Madrid Grand Prix, at Jarama in Spain.
The agreement between the ACN/ASNs and race promoters within the FIA was that no country should have more than one event counting for the Formula One World Championship each year, although an exception was later made for the USA because of its size. Then Italy got an extra event in 1981 as the San Marino Grand Prix. This was a FOCA tribute to Ferrari (the Imola circuit was named after his deceased son Dino); then the UK was given an extra event in 1983 as the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. As a result, a second race in a single country for FOCA’s commercial reasons became quite usual. The FIA’s only financial interest in its championships (including Formula One) was its calendar fee for each event. All the commercial rights belonged to the promoter in each case, as they still do at Le Mans.
The FIA’s role in motor sport was to provide the forum in which rules were agreed, then to supervise and referee the resulting events. It was never a commercial body. Balestre’s efforts, and to a lesser extent mine, to involve the FIA in the sport commercially came to an end in 2002 when we made the deal with the European Commission. In effect, that deal returned things to the status quo ante and made sure they would stay there. Probably best for everyone in the end.
ENDNOTES
1. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhealth/27/0012029.html
2. Just such a judicial body to replace the WMSC as a tribunal was introduced by Jean Todt shortly after he took over.
3. German media company Constantin Medien were due money if the Formula One shares were sold for more than an agreed sum. They sued Bernie in the High Court, claiming that the sale of shares to CVC was at an undervalue. They lost.
4. http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/constantin-median-v-ecclestone-ors.pdf
5. Alan Donnelly was then socialist leader of the European Parliament Economic Committee, rapporteur on the car industry and chairman of the European Parliamentary Committee for Relations with the United States Congress. He later became leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, holding the position from 1997 to 2000.
6. EU Commission’s Communication on Road Safety (17/3/2000 Com2000 125 final)
7. ABS is an anti-lock braking system that prevents a car’s wheels locking up, no matter how hard the driver presses the brakes. Preventing the wheels locking increases the rate at which the car will slow but, perhaps more importantly, it also allows the car to be steered round an obstacle with the brakes full on. Without ABS, the car will simply slide into the obstacle with all its wheels locked when making an emergency stop.
8. In 2014, Thurlbeck was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for conspiring to intercept communications and the unlawful interception of voicemail messages.
9. Article 307(c), Code of Conduct of the Bar of England and Wales, 8th Edn.
10. My solicitors’ bill was £510,000, the proportion the News of the World had to pay was £420,000, leaving me £30,000 out of pocket despite the £60,000 damages.
11. As of October 2014, eight of the ten News of the World journalists charged with phone hacking have either been convicted or pleaded guilty.
12. Jonathan Heawood is a former director of programmes at the Sigrid Rausing Trust, Europe’s largest private human rights foundation, director of the English Centre of International PEN, deputy literary editor of the Observer and editor of the Fabian Review.
INDEX
2i’s Coffee Bar, Soho ref1
Acropolis Rally ref1
advertising rights ref1, ref2
Agnelli, Gianni ref1
Ahrens, Kurt ref1
air restrictors ref1
Akers, Sue ref1
Al-Fayed, Mohamed ref1
Alessi, Rosario ref1
Alfa Romeo ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8
Alliance Internationale de Tourisme (AIT) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Alonso, Fernando ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
American Automobile Association (AAA) ref1, ref2
American racing scene ref1
Amon, Chris ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Andretti, Mario ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Anstey, Gordon ref1
anti-lock braking system (ABS) ref1
antitrust violation ref1
Argentine Grand Prix ref1
1974 ref1
1977 ref1
1979 ref1
1981 ref1
Armco barriers ref1
Ashley, Ian ref1
Ashman, Jonathan ref1
Association Sportive Nationale (ASN) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
ATS team ref1
Audetto, Daniele ref1, ref2
Austin, Ronnie ref1
Australian Grand Prix
1994 ref1
2009 ref1, ref2
Austrian Grand Prix 1975 ref1
Auto Union ref1
Automobilclub von Deutschland (AvD) ref1
Automobile Association (AA) ref1
Automobile Club de France (ACF) ref1
Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) ref1
Automobile Club di Milano ref1
Automobile Club Nationale (ACN) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Automobile Competitions Committee for the United States (ACCUS) ref1, ref2
Autosport ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Axel Springer Verlag ref1
Bahrain Grand Prix ref1
Balestre, Jean-Marie ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41, ref42
Bangemann, Martin ref1, ref2
Banks, Tony ref1
Barclay brothers ref1
‘barge boards’ ref1
Barnett, Professor Steve ref1
Barrichello, Rubens ref1
Bayer AG ref1
BBM ref1, ref2
Belgian Grand Prix ref1
1970 ref1, ref2
1980 ref1
1998 ref1
Beltoise, Jean-Pierre ref1
Benetton ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Benson, David ref1
Berger, Gerhard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Berger, Jacques ref1
Berkeley, Humphry
ref1, ref2
Berlusconi, Silvio ref1, ref2
Bermondsey by-election (1983) ref1
Bertarelli, Ernesto ref1
Betjeman, John ref1
Beuttler, Mike ref1
Bild ref1
Black and Tans ref1
blackmail ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8
Blair, Cherie ref1
Blair, Tony ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
Blatter, Sepp ref1
Bloor, Rodney ref1
BMW ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9
Boeri, Michel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12
Bolt, Robert ref1
Bordeo, Eduardo ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Bossom, Sir Clive ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Bower, Tom ref1
Brabham, Jack ref1, ref2, ref3
Brabham BT23C ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Brabham team ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10
Brambilla, Vittorio ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Brands Hatch ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Brawn, Ross ref1
Brawn team ref1
Brazilian Grand Prix ref1
breakaway proposals ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
breakaway series 1980-81 ref1, ref2
Briatore, Flavio ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14