Tributes pour in after F1 icon Max Mosley dies at 81

Billionaire Bernie Ecclestone has led the tributes flowing in for former F1 boss Max Mosley, who died from cancer at age 81.

Tributes flow in for Max Mosley. (Photo by Carl Court/AFP)

Max Mosley, the former president of motorsport’s world governing body the FIA, who has died aged 81, “was like a brother”, ex-F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone said.

Mosley became FIA president in 1993 after serving in previous administrative roles in the sport, including within F1.

The former racing driver, who had been suffering from cancer, served three terms as president before standing down in 2009.

“We were, I suppose like brothers,” Ecclestone told AFP. “Max could be a difficult person to understand but we understood each other.

“I could tell him if I felt he was wrong and he would accept it and he could do vice versa.”

Ecclestone, 90, said Mosley did not get the credit for what he had done in the sport.

“He was interesting and a character,” said Ecclestone. “He had a Corinthian spirit.

“He was the sort of guy who was hard to get to know.

“Those who did not know what he was really made of found it easier to criticise him than try and get to know what made him tick.

“Thus they would rather remember him making one mistake than for all the good he did.”

Ecclestone said Mosley having been a driver had the best interests of the sport at heart.

“He was genuinely interested in doing what he could to make the sport more accessible and easier for people,” he said.

“Personally I think they were pretty good changes.”

Tributes have flowed in from F1 teams, with many paying homage to Mosley’s pivotal roles in enhancing driver safety.

F1 powerhouse Mercedes tweeted: “From driver to team founder to FIA President, Max Mosley was a powerful modernising force for world motorsport and a unique personality in our industry.”

Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren team said: “His tenure was defined by the major safety advances in motorsport and global mobility that continue to this day.”

Bernie Ecclestone (left) said that Mosley (right) was “like a brother” to him. Credit: Mike Cooper/Allsport

Mosley was the son of 1930s British fascist leader Oswald Mosley and Diana, one of the famed Mitford sisters. He found, though, that his colourful parentage was not a problem when he drove in Formula Two for Brabham in 1968.

“I heard somebody (one of his fellow drivers) say, ‘Mosley, Max Mosley, he must be some relation of Alf Mosley, the coachbuilder’,” Mosley told Atlas F1 in 2011.

“And I thought to myself, ‘I’ve found a world where they don’t know about Oswald Mosley’.”

His love of motor racing began in his youth and he was involved in Formula 2 for Brabham and Lotus before retiring in 1969.

His first race at the Nurburgring in Germany in 1968 is best known for the tragic death of legend Jim Clark. A year later at the same track an accident prompted him to call time on his career.

“The left front wheel stopped turning and I thought, ‘This is trouble’, and I ended up in the caravan park,” he told Atlas F1 in the 2011 interview.

“It was evident that I wasn’t going to be world champion.”

He became president of FISA, Formula One’s governing body at the time, in 1991 and two years later took over unopposed at the FIA.

He oversaw the safety reforms in the sport that followed the death of Ayrton Senna at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994.

Mosley is credited as being one of the pioneers for enhancing driver safety in F1 (photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images).

Originally published as Tributes pour in after F1 icon Max Mosley dies at 81