(Motorsport) Mohammed Ben Sulayem was elected as President of the FIA in December 2021 and quickly outlined his plan to restructure the FIA’s F1 operations. However, the 61 year old Emirati has now relinquished control of daily operations and will only concentrate on “strategic matters” with director of single-seater racing Nikolas Tombazis taking over the daily operations. It is understood that multiple figures from FIA’s world motorsport council have raised concerns with Sulayem and have offered advice after recent controversies. The FIA said that the move was already planned as the “next natural step”.

The letter released to the 10 teams said “My stated objective was to be a non-executive president via the recruitment of a team of professional managers, which has now been largely completed. Therefore, going forward, your day-to-day contact for all matters on F1 will be with Nikolas Tombazis, director of single-seater racing) and his team, while I will focus on strategic matters with my leadership team.”

A statement released by the FIA read “he president’s manifesto clearly set out this plan before he was elected – it pledged “the appointment of an FIA CEO to provide an integrated and aligned operation,” as well as to “introduce a revised governance framework” under “a leadership team focused on transparency, democracy, and growth. These goals, as well as the announcement of the new structure of the single-seater department, have been planned since the beginning of this presidency.The FIA president has a wide remit that covers the breadth of global motor sport and mobility, and now that the structural reorganisation in Formula 1 is complete, this is a natural next step.”

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