LONDON -- Max Mosley claims he is coming under pressure to reverse his decision last week not to seek re-election as president of Formula One's ruling body.
Mosley originally said he would step down as president of the International Automobile Federation in October. His decision helped broker a peace deal with the Formula One Teams Association, which had threatened to form a breakaway series if the FIA pressed ahead with an unpopular plan for budget caps from next year.
However, FOTA may not have seen the last of Mosley, according to an interview with the Mail on Sunday, where the 69-year-old official said some in the world of motorsport want still him to stand for a fifth term after 16 years in the job.
"They made the mistake of dancing on my grave before I was buried," Mosley was quoted as saying. "It's no good the teams getting a PR agency to claim I am dead and buried when I am standing here as large as life. I am under pressure now from all over the world to stand for re-election.
"I do genuinely want to stop. But if there is going to be a big conflict with the car industry, for example, with the FOTA teams, then I won't stop. I will do whatever I have to do. It's not in my nature to walk away from a fight."
It was also clear that a comment made after Wednesday's peace deal by Ferrari chief Luca di Montezemolo, referring to Mosley as a "dictator" whose reign had been ended, clearly rankled with the FIA president.
"By going home to Italy and telling the Italian media that they had toppled the dictator, di Montezemolo has tried to make it sound like I sit here and just decide what's going to happen," Mosley said. "It's absolutely not true ... to say that I run a dictatorship is nonsense."
