No grounding for james allen opinion there. Of course it was always going to be like this since Todt was Mosleys man and like any good dictator they chose their successsor. Utterly corrupt. Sad to see so many buying into the 'incompetent' Ari propoganda which was propogated by the Mosley hyenas.

No surprise to see you dying to see your ferrari man running the FIA, and of course supporting Mosleys successor.

But that's what the FIA wants. People give Mosley far, far too much credit with the muddying of the political waters in F1. The fact is that the vast majority of the FIA's members love the status quo. They don't want reform or transparency.

So when Ari Vatanen comes in offering sweeping change, he's already on a hiding to nothing. The FIA membership want a puppet that can get them what they want. Remember, even Mosley played the Vatanen role as FOCA's hero last time against Balestre, but he soon came around to the FIA way of thinking. It's impossible not to if you want to survive in an organisation as corrupt and greedy as the FIA.

You either toe the line or you're out.

The opportunity to get real reform was lost when FOTA abandoned the breakaway but, let's be honest, it was never really going to happen was it?

Todt Manifesto doesn't changes anything except calling for more standartisation. As such continues the wish of transfer of resources(=money) from Technical side to the Show-biz side.
It is obvious to the continuosly downplaying of engineers. So it is to be expected even more standartisation that is already killing Farse-1.
Of course to make that point working FIA needs to have all the power.

So the FIA will remain the mess it is, and like Burai says it is how it wishes to be.

I´m left with a sour taste in my mouth after reading JT´s "manifesto". He sounds like every other politician in the world. Blah blah blah.

What sweeping change has he offered? So far he's told the public absolutely nothing about what he specifically will do. He hasn't even declared who his 'team' is to run things, much less anything specific he's actually going to do.

Saying you will change things is easy. Putting specific changes down on to paper, that takes planning, support and a spine.

None of these characteristics Vatanen has displayed in his candidacy. He still seems chastened by his african faux pas.

perhaps, but as someone who is very anti todt, i cant really argue with whats in the manifesto... just a matter of whether he would deliver.
I wonder why he wants the job...whats in it for him. he just isnt the benevolent sort .... we all know its an unpaid position, so why would he want it?

Why does he do all that charity work? Simply because it is what drives him. He's made his fortune, he has a stable life, he wants a challenge.

Stuff like the scrapping of the minimum term for the president, removing the cabinet system and a changing of the weighting of FIA member votes:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/76857

I was hoping that people would be after a bit more than "candidate that gets their manifesto out first wins".

Todt must under NO CIRCUMSTANCE become the new FIA president.

F1 just can not afford the bad reputation it would get should a Ferrari man be put as head of the organisation, not to think of another debacle like we just had which will be highly likely.

We simply MUST stop this. How can we best influence? Start a petition or write our local motorsport organizations?

It's sad because Ari seems like a nice guy but his challenge is dead in the water.
It's all ill prepared, crappily executioned, no cabinet and no ideas

Look at him now he has announced to nominate his cabinet twice and yet we see nothing, the dude is not a serious candidate.

The FIA deserves a more professional president than Ari Vatanen.

You should start an online petition, very effective those

I think you mean the maximum term for the president?

Also Ari has never adressed that.

I've just thought...



...Todt gets elected, and then he appoints new commissioner responsible for Formula 1: MAX!

That would be fun.

He needs to stop badmouthing Todt and others.

whilst I don't care who get's it - this guy isn't doing himself any favours. I' agree with your last statement. Ari has looked very very shabby indeed - he better lift his game if anyone wants to take him seriously.

Well, go then, brush your teeth, and vote for JT! It's right thing to do.

Many journo, reasonably reliable said that it was a bad divorce.

Someone please make this happen. It would be hilarious.

In my eyes he is telling it like it is ---- Todt and the other Mosley cronies must be kicked out of motorsport.
I have a feeling that FOTA are preparing for a much longer game when the recently signed Concorde expires we will see them give Bernie and the FIA a soldiers farewell

I think given the utterly ramshackle way Vatanen is running his campaign it's going to be less about 'the candidate that gets their manifesto out first wins', and more 'the candidate that gets a manifesto out wins'.

Vatanen has organised, um, a few visits to the F1 paddock and a rather illadvised set of statements about Todt and Michelle Yeoh. The one concrete promise he made - to conduct a campaign on issues not personalities - lasted all of about 4 seconds.

The guy is a joke, his candidacy is frankly hilliarious and the man as a political figure (as opposed to his achievements in motorsport) a failure.

We've had a decade under a failed politician. I think it's well past time F1, the FIA and motoring in general had someone successful, professional and well regarded by those he has managed at the helm.

And Ari Vatanen is not a single one of those things. Could you imagine the FIA being ran anything like this clown has ran his presidency campaign?

All the talk about manifesto this and manifesto that is useless, the guy that 'buys' Africa wins, just like Max did with his vote of confidence. Soccer's FIFA president race in 2002 was won in Africa as well. As it seems Todt is doing a good job visiting africa all the time. My money is on Todt.

So Ari's campaign is a ramshackle simple because he hasnt released his manifesto and cabinet yet? I wasnt aware it was a race. There is plenty of time to do those things, and your vicious squeeling character assassination of Ari based on that is pathetic, and obviously motivated by Ari's quite accurate comments against the corrupt and grubby ways of Mosley and Todt, who is totally unqualified for the position, as he is not neutral and that is actually the most important qualification for the job. If the president of a governing body is not impartial or even perceived not to be so, then the whole organisation is undermined. Only in this F1 circus could a former long term manager of only 3 years ago from a current team, be eligable for president of the governing body of the sport. Its an utter farce.


It would be leagues better than the circus we have had for the last 15 years.

Don't be silly Ruud Africa holds only about 35 of the 221 FIA member clubs, so that won't "buy" you the win like you so condescendingly say.

The point is, for those people (like me) who ideally want someone other than Todt, the dynamic and independant challenger needs to be a credible option. As much as I like Ari, he's simply not that man. We need someone who can be politically strong, professional and strategic in their approach. They need to offer a manifesto and a cabinet that will blow Todt out of the water (which won't be easy). Time is of the essense if this candidate is to emerge.

Let me clarify:

First of all; the voting procedure isn't very transparent. The number of 221 sound familiar, but Mosley won the last vote of confidence with 103 against 55. (with seven abstentions and 4 invalid) (source autosport). that means 169 votes. according to Bernie, Africa has 36 member clubs with 23 voting rights. ( source eurosport)

So Africa represents 36/221 = 16.2%, or 23/169 = 13.6% of the votes. That alone isn't enough, but they are easy votes (some of the clubs have only 200 members). The smaller clubs are dependant on the FIA for income so their vote will be loyal to the FIA. as Todt is the backed candidate he will get the smaller club's vote.

The same logic applies to South America region according to Bernie: (source eurosport)



Again these votes aren't enough, but considering elections are usually swung by a couple percent, these numbers are rather significant.

Regards, Ruud

I should think the teams would have something to say about that.

But even if Max were appointed commissioner, I think the presence of the working groups and commissions would reduce his power.

Surely you weren't naive enough to believe anyone stood a chance against Mosley's nominated successor? The FIA has been nothing more than a rubber-stamping agency for Mosley's whims for years.

I'm glad to see Todt putting forward decent proposals, seemingly intent on reversing Mosley's concentration of power at the centre, and also looking to improve the derisory stewarding. He's certainly promising sensible changes, however it remains to be seen whether he can rein in his love of backroom deals, let alone foster within himself a sense of fair play.

Do you think Vatanen is a failed politician? and why? Im am no expert in french/finnish politics, but it seems in the last election he was more of a lijstduwer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijstduwer). He was second to last in his party's list. (http://192.49.229.35/EP2009/e/ehd_listat/kokomaa.html)

just to be clear I'm not stating he hasn't failed (apart from getting elected twice), just asking if someone has more knowledge on the subject

I always think Todt's run at the presidency would be easier than Vatanens. But despite having a tougher job ahead of him, Vatanen seems to have done even less to organise a credible challenge for the presidency than Todt.

Thanks for the clarification Ruud and the links (although there's a ")" too much at the end) but those remarks from Bernie are about the vote of confidence from last year.
Now voting your president out of FIA is something completely different than chosing a new one, hence I think this time the smaller clubs will vote for the candidate that they think will look after their interests in the best way.
That can be Ari or Todt equally.

I agree with you that the numbers are significant but that's something else then stating "he who buys the African votes wins".

It is a nice attention grabber! I fixed the links, thanks for the notification.
the links were about the vote of confidence, there just isn't much useful data on actual elections because as of my knowledge there haven't been any real elections (no serious opposing candidates). we have to go back to the Balestre-Mosley FISA election. It is difficult to draw conclusions from that because a lot of factors were in play)

True it's some time ago that they actually had more than 1 candidate and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if that's not the case in October either, because I can totally see Vatanen pull out of the election closer to the FIA GA.

It's totally understandable that vatinen is less advanced on this than Todt, lets not forget most people have been talking about Todt replacing mosley for years, he's had a long time to get a team ready, he's also had (disgracefully) the full support of the existing president which means his team members have nothing to fear about going public.

Vatinen by contrast has only made a decision to run quite recently and without the support of the outgoing. corrupt and vindictive president his team will be harder to persuade to stick their head above the parapet.

To be honest i think it's disgusting that people should actually be afraid to run against mosley/todt.

Mosley introduced the plan to put forward an entire team for election to cripple any opposition, one man may have big enough balls to oppose you but it's much harder to find a team of people brave enough to do so. Sadly it looks like that filthy little plan may be working but here's hoping that Ari can find a team with similar courage to himself and get this party going.

As for Todts electoral promises......well, there's a reason that Ferrari lost vast amounts of respect under him despite huge on-track success and if he gets in you'll se why all over again.


Todt is every bit as corrupt as his 'elegant' (prostitute-torturing, wife-cheating, gangbang-organising) friend, mosley.



20 years of corruption nearly killed F1.......let's vote for more of the same! VOTE TODT!

I don't see anybody afraid to run against Jean Todt but I do think a lot of FIA members hesitate to back the amateurish campaign of Ari Vatanen.

Too true

No. Finland actually has real democracy; people who get most votes are elected. No dubious party lists here.

http://yle.fi/vaalit/tulospalvelu/

As you can see, Vatanen got 17 967 votes. He was 7th in his party. His party got 3 MEPs elected. He would have needed 51 494 to be 3rd in his party and get elected.

That's the point. You don't see them because they are afraid.

So the top 13 people from Finland get a seat regardless of how many votes went to the party itself?

after studying the list, I think Finland has roughly the same system we dutch have: the votes on a party determines the seats that party gets, then within the party, the ones with the most votes gets a seat. Am I right about this?

No. I thought the system can be clearly seen from the list in the link.

The one who gets most votes in a party gets all the votes of the party. The second gets 1/2 of the votes of the party. The third gets 1/3 of the votes of the party and so on...

So the biggest party gets most mandates. The second biggest gets second most mandates and so on. The parties get rouhgly the same percentage of mandates as their percentage of votes is.

A candidate has to get enough votes to be among those who get elected from his/her party.

About right, yes. See above.

ok, understand it now. it that case it could still be he was "lijstduwer" (english word would be list pusher). Somebody just there to get the party votes, but not in with a chance of being elected himself. However you believe he truly wanted to get elected? What do people in Finland think of Ari?

Well, he got elected the last time he was a candidate in Finland. Of course he wanted to get elected again.

There are no "lijstduwers" in Finland, I think. If someone is popular, he gets lots of votes and may get elected. Then he has to accept the mandate he got. Turning it down would be seen as dirty politics and would make the canditate very unpopular.


Ari seems to be a bit controversial figure in Finland. He got a lot of bad press after his climate opinions during his latest campaign. Many people seem to really hate him.

I've never liked him very much myself, cause he is such a "too good person". Annoying really. I don't oppose his politics, though.

thanks for your views!

Does it matter if he tells us nothing after all its the governing bodies that will vote not you or I.
That being said it does rather look like a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Vatanen to announce cabinet this week.

http://bit.ly/Z4aYD

AGAIN

but seriously I hope now that he announces the announcement for the 3rd time that he'll really follow through with it.

Liked this snippet from the article:

Although the early days of the election battle were clouded by controversy after Vatanen claimed that the FIA was helping fund Todt's campaign, he insists his comments were never intended as a criticism, and that his comments were taken out of context.

Poor Ari, his comments were taken out of context again just like his comments on Global Warming being a hoax were taken out of context.

Then you'll really like me!!

I don't think its disgusting. More like honest. Afterall Todt has been working on it for a few years. And out of but two candidates, Mosley says Todt is his preference. Which is logical since he knows Todt well, and Todt has been working for some time with that goal in mind. I imagine Todt's wife's road safety work is related to Todt's goal as well. Mosley is stating an obvious preference. I think it might be disgraceful for Mosley to attempt to hide such a preference.

Ari sounds principled but I can't help but think that him being President would lead to a lack of leadership. And having been in politics doesn't mean you're good at political tactics IMO. And if you want to achieve things for the FIA then you need to be able to manipulate the political circumstances. Given the potential powerful self interested chaos of the F1 motorsport teams alone, political skill and strength of character are mandatories IMO. Still if Ari wins the vote, that would show some political skills. So good luck to him. His softly softly approach might need some kind of scandal involving Todt for Ari to have any chance of winning IMO.

Incidentally, can Ari afford being FIA President?