Damon Hill has claimed former FIA president Max Mosley employed his intelligence “in the service of hatred and division” in response to a birthday tribute marking the late figure’s 86th birthday.
Hill’s comments followed a social media post from former McLaren and Aston Martin F1 communications boss Matt Bishop describing Mosley as “scarily intelligent.”
Damon Hill critical of former FIA president Max Mosley
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Hill, the 1996 world champion, replied to Bishop: “Don’t be fooled just because he could be ‘funny’. It was always at someone else’s expense.
“I’m not sure intelligence can be called that if it is employed in the service of hatred and division.”
Bishop’s original post said: “Love him or loathe him, you have to admit that he was a fascinating man, although he could be hard and even cruel. Above all, he was scarily intelligent.”
Mosley, who died by suicide aged 81 in May 2021 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, was a polarising figure during his stint as FIA president between 1993 and 2009.
Mosley was credited for helping to improve safety in Formula 1 following the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna, the three-time world champion and Hill’s Williams teammate at the time, in 1994.
Having worked as a barrister, he helped found the March Engineering team before moving into the motorsport political scene, regarded promoting road safety and introducing so-called green technology into F1 as his greatest achievements during his 16-year stint with the FIA.
Hill, who followed in the footsteps of his late father Graham by winning the F1 title in 1996, saw his entire Formula 1 career coincide with Mosley’s time in office.
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Hill has previously admitted that his own view of Mosley “might be slightly jaded” given that he did not agree with the former FIA president’s decisions during his time in office.
The 1996 world champion was famously outspoken over the FIA’s handling of the so-called ‘Spygate’ scandal in 2007, which resulted in McLaren being fined a record $100million after a team employee was found to be in possession of confidential Ferrari technical documents.
According to a biography of former Formula 1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone written by the author Tom Bower, Mosley appeared to indicate that his personal animosity towards Ron Dennis, the then-McLaren team principal, had contributed to the FIA’s decision to impose a record fine.
Mosley was quoted as saying of McLaren’s punishment: “$5million for the offence and $95million for Ron being a t**t.”
Hill also called for Mosley to consider his position following revelations about his private life in 2008.
Mosley was later awarded £60,000 in damages following a landmark case in which the High Court ruled that there was “a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
In an interview with Sky News following Mosley’s death in 2021, Hill said: “An extremely strong character and extremely resilient as well.
“Not many people could have endured what he what he put himself through [after the 2008 newspaper reports] and he wasn’t afraid to fight back.
“He was a formidable individual and someone who you didn’t trifle with lightly, so an extremely bright guy and extremely determined to get his way.
“To say I knew Max well might be stretching it.
“Obviously I was involved with Formula 1 at a very crucial time when Max made a name for himself in campaigning for safety after the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger.
“He was very effective in bringing in the changes that needed to be made.
“But he also worked very closely with the commercial wing of Formula 1, with Bernie Ecclestone, and he and Bernie were a team that wielded quite a lot of influence, it’s fair to say, over the sport.
“I think my opinion of Max might be slightly jaded, because some of the opinions or some of the decisions that were made when I was racing I might not have agreed with.
“But he wasn’t afraid of making decisions and some of them quite audacious.
“For instance, the $100million fine of McLaren was one which caught the attention of a lot of people.”
Hill went on to state that Mosley’s legal background was immensely valuable to F1 when changes were necessary following the deaths of Senna and Ratzenberger in 1994.
Asked if there was an acceptance that F1 needed to change after that weekend, he replied: “Absolutely.
“I think there was panic in the air and I think that he was quite decisive and he knew quite clearly, could see quite clearly, what needed to be done.
“His training as a lawyer, I think, helped him enormously in that sense and his political skills in saying the right things and doing the right things so that Formula 1 wasn’t restricted or legislated against, because it would have been very easy at that time for the sport to come under some penalties and restrictions that it wouldn’t have liked.
“So he fought back and he made the changes necessary in advance of anyone legislating against them.
“If you think about the safety aspects of Formula 1 and the changes that were brought in, I think the fact that Roman Grosjean managed to survive his accident in Bahrain [in 2020] can be linked directly to the changes that were brought in under Max Mosley and the team in Formula 1, Sid Watkins and all the people who work on the safety side.”
Asked if Mosley’s campaigning for safety improvements were influenced by his own experiences of racing in the 1960s, Hill explained: “Yes.
“He was shocked by the callousness, the word I think he used, about racing because there were a lot of young guys competing at his level in Formula 3 and Formula 2 who were dying and and nothing was done about it.
“I think he was quite moved by those losses and I think that he resolved that he was going to do something about it.
“Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that Max was much loved by everyone in the sport.
“He was not afraid of standing up to [people] or creating divisions in the sport and some people strongly objected to some of the decisions that he made.
“There were definitely some different camps and different opinions about his rule of Formula 1.
“But no one can deny that he was extremely bright individual who got things done and worked for the sport in many other areas.”
Hill went on to claim that Mosley, the son of the controversial British politician Oswald Mosley, was perhaps “frustrated” by being prevented from breaking into politics as a result of his familial links.
Put to him that the fact he was re-elected three times was a reflection of his success at the FIA, Hill replied: “I think it was probably a bit like shooting fish in a barrel for Max, actually, keeping his reins on power in the FIA.
“But I think he was frustrated, it seemed to me, that he was prevented from acting in the real political world because of his legacy, because of his parentage and because of his perhaps controversial political ties.”
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