Mosley unlikely to step down amid crisis

Although there has been widespread speculation in the paddock that teams are keen for him to follow through on his original intention to stand down at the end of his current term, Mosley said on Friday that the threat of a breakaway was actually having the opposite effect in forcing him to stay.

"I don't want to go on too long, but the difficulty they are putting me in is that even if I wanted to stop this October, they are making it very difficult for me to do so," said Mosley in an interview with the BBC.

"So actually everything they are doing is counterproductive because the people in the FIA are saying we have all this trouble, we are being attacked and you must stay.

"Whereas if we had peace and I said I would actually like to stop in October, then they are very nice. They all say they want me to stay, but they wouldn't really mind and someone else would come along."

Mosley stated that if him standing down would ensure peace then he would be more than happy to walk away.

"Absolutely," he said. "[But] everybody knows it wouldn't be [peace], because the next person they [FOTA] would want his head, and the person after that, his head, until they got what they wanted which is the power to run the sport away from the FIA. It would be exactly the same with Bernie..."

He added: "What you cannot do is walk away from an organisation in the middle of a crisis."

Mosley also dismissed claims that his dictatorial approach in the FIA was a cause for concern.

"The idea that it is me is a complete myth," he explained. "I am the figurehead because I happen to be the president, but I cannot move without the authority of all these different countries. We have 120 different countries and each is represented by the head of motorsport in that country. It is a huge organisation, so the idea that it is somehow me, that is really not the issue.

"What it is is that they want to take over the governance of the sport from the FIA and run it themselves. They want to take over the money from Bernie and have that for themselves.

"Well, the first thing they have to do is get rid of me, but then whoever replaced me would be exactly the same - he would defend the interests of the FIA because the championship belongs to them. So, unless they found somebody who was prepared to let it all go, it wouldn't work. If I dropped dead tomorrow there would be somebody taking exactly the same position."