British newspaper The Independent named Mosley “an F1 martyr”, while Spanish newspaper El Mundo argued that Formula One has been saved by Mosley's surrender. The Times also opinionated that Mosley was “sacrificed” for the good of the sport, while The Guardian said the FIA president preferred to let go of his position within the ruling body “to appease (the) dissident teams”.
In light of all these assumptions, Mosley made it very clear that he was going to step down from his position as president of the FIA anyway, and that FOTA's pushing him to give away his Formula One related duties earlier than October this year – when the ruling body will elect a new president – cannot be seen as a defeat.
“I told most of the senior staff here last year that I planned not to seek re-election, but I did not want that decision to leak out as it would have undermined my authority,” confirmed Mosley for the media on Wednesday.
Before the agreement was reached yesterday morning, Mosley warned the FOTA that he would reconsider stepping down from FIA's presidency, given the teams' attacks over the governing process of the international federation. However, Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone confirmed this was never going to be the case, as Mosley had told him a year ago that he will not run for another mandate.
“In fairness to Max he wanted to leave last year and I asked him not to go until things were sorted out. People forget he achieved a lot in his time. They forget the positive and concentrate on the negative. We've been friends for 40 years. He understood the sport and we knew how to do things together,” sounded Ecclestone's praise to Mosley, as reported by The Mirror newspaper.
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