Max Mosley's Christmas message

"It's not about greed - it's about power. There is one individual who rather fancies himself as the (new) Bernie. Whether or not he could do the job I don't know. I think Flavio Briatore sees himself as the Bernie and he's entitled to that view...I think he [Briatore] is associated with them [the 'loonies']. I don't think he's the leader - it's in the very nature of loonies that they don't have one." (Max Mosley, 19th June 2009).

"The dispute to which Briatore refers was between the FIA and some of the teams in a grouping known as the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA). But Briatore's role was marginal at best. There was no absolutely no rancour on my part towards him: we often spoke and had a friendly lunch together in Monaco shortly after the dispute with FOTA was settled." (Max Mosley, 17th December 2009).

Over a month after Flavio Briatore's submissions to the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris were published in The Guardian, Max Mosley has issued a response. Let us recall that Briatore is seeking to overturn his lifetime ban from motorsport, for his alleged role in crashgate, and is also seeking damages of £900,000. In his submissions to the court, Briatore described Mosley as "blinded by an excessive desire for personal revenge," and complained that he "assumed the roles of complainant, investigator, prosecutor and judge" in a breach of the "most basic rules of procedure and the rights to a fair trial."

In response, Mosley is now attempting to tar Briatore with his involvement in previous issues stretching back to 1994:

"Briatore should be the last person to complain the FIA have not treated him fairly. The FIA have repeatedly given him the benefit of the doubt. It did so when prohibited software was found in a car under his control; again when a component was removed from his team's refuelling equipment; again when his team failed to declare properly the purpose of a particular suspension component, and most recently when they were caught with information illicitly acquired from another team."

There are few in Formula One naive enough to believe that Briatore had no involvement in crashgate, or indeed in some of those previous controversies, although the 'suspension component' to which Mosley alludes, was the mass damper, a perfectly legal component which was banned by the FIA on spurious grounds as Renault fought a familiar battle with both Ferrari and the FIA to win the World Championship.

Yet the main question which arises here is one of timing. Why has this statement been issued now? Briatore's submissions to the French court were published in The Guardian on 12th November, the case was heard in Paris on November 24th, and the judgement was reputedly scheduled for January 5th 2010. So why has Mosley decided to respond to Briatore's claims now?

One obvious possibility is that Mosley is seeking to influence the court during its decision-making process. It is also possible that the court has given some indication of the direction in which it is leaning before publishing its judgement, and it may be that Mosley and the FIA now anticipate that they will lose this case, and are seeking to pre-emptively counteract the negative publicity.