Max Mosley

Max Mosley was born in difficult circumstances. His father, Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the New Party, Britain’s proto fascist political party of the late thirties, and his mother Diana Mitford of the Mitford literary family had been detained under war time regulations a month after his birth. After briefly dabbling in his father’s post war political career, Mosley became enamoured with motor racing after a visit to the Silverstone circuit. He began racing in 1966 and eventually reached as far as Formula Two, the level below Formula One grand prix racing before retiring from active racing in 1969 and founding March Racing.

March entered Formula One in 1970 and were immediately successful when Jackie Stewart won the non championship Race of Champions in a customer car for the Tyrrell Organization. A feat the Tyrrell/March combination repeated when Stewart won the Spanish GP later in the year. The March team were near the peak of Formula One but it took them until 1975 for them to record a win under their own name, when Vittorio Brambilla won the Austrian Grand Prix. Ronnie Peterson won the Italian Grand Prix in 1976, which was to be March’s second and final victory.

Mosley left March in late 1977 and became legal advisor to the Formula One Constructors’ Association. He stepped away from motorsport in 1982 and worked for the Conservative Party for 4 years, but returned in 1986 and was elected president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile in 1993. He served four terms before stepping down in 2009. Towards the end of his term in office he won a court case against the News of the World newspaper, which had reported his involvement in what they said was a Nazi-themed sex act involving five women, on the grounds that it had breached his privacy. He committed suicide by gunshot in 2021 after a diagnosis of cancer revealed he had only a short time to live.