Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
LONDON — Max Mosley, who shook off the stigma of his family’s links to fascism to become international motorsport’s top administrator and later made a stand as a privacy campaigner in response to tabloid stories about his sex life, has died. He was 81.
Friend Bernie Ecclestone, the former F1 chief executive, said Monday that Mosley died the previous evening. He did not disclose the cause of death.
“He was like family to me. We were like brothers. I am pleased in a way because he suffered for too long,” Ecclestone said.
As president of motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, from 1993-2009, the suave, Oxford University-educated Briton oversaw the stunning global spread of Formula One, with new races in Asia and the Middle East.