The late FIA president and one-time ‘garagiste’ had an important question to ask,which has resonance today in light of Formula 1 teams’ resistance to new entries
TREVOR CARLIN
OPINION PIT + PADDOCK
Today, Thursday 23 May, is the third anniversary of the passing of Max Mosley. While the youngsters hopefully reading this – probably some of my recent Formula 4 drivers! – possibly will not know of him, many other people will remember him, but not necessarily solely for good reasons.
Max courted controversy because of his upbringing, his family and his absolute self-belief. He was extremely intelligent, did not suffer fools lightly, and he made that very clear. He would have made a great politician, because he could debate better than anyone. But he chose to use his skills in the motorsport world, and we should be thankful for that. As team principal of the March Formula 1 team in the 1970s, he became pals with a certain Bernie Ecclestone, owner of the Brabham Formula 1 team, and, later, the commercial rights to F1. Bernie helped Max become the president of FISA – then the motorsport arm of the FIA – in 1991, replacing the highly disruptive Jean-Marie Balestre.
All of a sudden the old ‘garagistes’ had full control of F1 and world motorsport, and the rest is, as they say, history.
During my period of working with my uncles Vic and Steve Hollman at Bowman Racing in the British Formula 3 Championship, in 1990 we made a decision to build our own chassis to take on the mighty Ralt, Reynard and Dallara in the global F3 market. At exactly the same time, Eddie Jordan, who had run Johnny Herbert to the 1987 British F3 title and had gone on to great success in Formula 3000, had decided to build his own F1 car and team. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and, while we had some good results with the Bruce Carey-designed BC-1, it was never as successful as the beautiful Gary Andersonpencilled 191. That began the demise of Bowman as an F3 powerhouse, while at Silverstone Eddie created the last true privateer F1 team on a wing and prayer.
By 2006, Jordan had become Midland, now run by Colin Kolles. While running Carlin Motorsport in numerous junior categories, I had a brief period in F1 working with Colin at Midland. However, despite having Carlin team members and ex-Carlin drivers, it became obvious that a small underfunded team could not compete anymore, so I swiftly returned ‘home’ to the junior categories.
Here is where my brief contact with Max came about. I received an
