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.
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But he was also in charge at the time of the tragic death of star driver Ayrton Senna in 1994, multiple scandals and furious squabbling within the sport about its astronomic costs and the distribution of its massive revenues. Mosley said his greatest achievement was making the dangerous sport safer after the death of Senna, Brazil’s beloved three-time world champion. Noting that F1 teams were spending as much as US$1,200 for a single wheel nut, Mosley also fought to cap costs and give the gas-guzzling sport a greener image by introducing biofuel technology.
News of the World published secretly filmed video of Mosley being whipped and engaging in sex acts in a London flat with five dominatrices, one wearing a German Luftwaffe jacket and another in a striped prison-style uniform.