FIA presidential candidate outlines three core principles behind Ben Sulayem challenge

Tim Mayer has offered an update on how his FIA Presidential campaign has progressed since announcing it at Silverstone in July, as he stands against Mohammed Ben Sulayem for the governing body’s top office when elections are held in December.

There are just three months left until the FIA’s General Assembly votes on who will serve as the next FIA President on December 12th, with only two confirmed candidates – one being the incumbent, Mohammed Ben Sulayem as the Emirati aims for a second term in office, while American motorsport official Tim Mayer announced the commencement of his ‘FIA Forward’ campaign ahead of the British Grand Prix earlier this summer.

Tim Mayer interview: How the initial stages of the FIA Forward campaign have progressed

Mayer generously gave some of his time attending the Dutch Grand Prix to offer PlanetF1.com an exclusive insight into how the initial stages of his FIA Forward campaign have played out.

PlanetF1: You announced the launch of your ‘FIA Forward’ campaign ahead of the British Grand Prix, outlining the reasons why you had entered the Presidential race, standing against Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Can you tell us how the campaign has started off for you?

Tim Mayer: “Visiting members, which is what we said.

“Primarily, the job is to go listen to them. I think it’s a message that’s well received – we’re not always going to have the best solutions, and the solutions are going to come out of the clubs.

“For them, this is a pretty revolutionary idea. I’ve been in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and headed back to Africa and Asia, and it’s really about listening to what the regional issues are.

“Rally is in desperate condition. Grassroots motor sport… now we’re talking about a Formula 4 season that costs potentially 400 to 500,000 euros. Even in Europe, that’s unaffordable.

“We’re talking about karting where some people are paying a million euros a year for karting. You start to talk to African nations, for instance, about ‘What are the problems? What are the issues?’

“It really comes down to three things: cost, complexity, and culture. The cost is out of sight. The complexity of the FIA regulations is making it very difficult for them to operate. The culture, which is Geneva-centric, shall we say.

“When we think of Africa, we think monolithically of Africa, but it’s 1.4 billion people spread over a continent that’s three times the size of the United States.

“When you go to East Africa and you talk about East African issues, and you differentiate between those issues and West African issues, or South African issues, or North African issues, they start to think, ‘Okay, here’s somebody who really gets it. Here’s somebody who’s listening to us and what our problems are’, and so on.

“I told them, ‘Look, I have good ideas, but does this work for you? How would we modify it to work for you? How do we do these different things?’

“It all comes back to cost, complexity, and culture. We need to change the culture of the FIA so that it’s a service to the member clubs, not the other way around.

“At the moment, the big thing is the member clubs are here to service the FIA, and it’s backwards for them. So, these are messages that are resonating.

“I think Mohammed is very good at calling up the members, but I don’t think he’s very good at listening to the members.”

Shortly after the launch of Mayer’s campaign, he revealed the first part of his manifesto, concentrating on Governance.

Candidates’ manifestos are divided across Governance, Mobility, and Sport – these documents, outlining the plans a candidate has for their approach to the respective areas of the FIA’s responsibilities, are made available to all 245 of the FIA Members’ Clubs who will cast the critical votes at the General Assembly on December 12th.

PlanetF1: What has been the reaction from the Members’ Clubs to what was published?

Tim Mayer: “I think it depends on whether you’re a big club or a small club. For the small clubs, they feel, frankly, that the FIA is a bit remote from them. The details of the governance manifesto don’t really feel like they have a big effect on them, but they acknowledge that they see a good programme.

“They acknowledge the broader messages, which is, for us, it’s more about servicing the members than it is the other way around. I think what’s more important is, for the big clubs, that they are very concerned about the direction of the FIA and how governance is really going south.

“Whereas, when you do comparisons benchmark against other sports, we’re just not in the right league table, as it were.

“So, for big clubs, where reputation is paramount, this is a huge concern. I think our manifesto really resonates more – the governance piece resonates more with the big clubs. For the small clubs, it’s more about personal service, about regional empowerment, those kinds of things.

“So all of that was contained in the manifesto. Mobility is going to be released (and has since been released), and a couple of weeks later, you’ll see the sport manifesto. Again, it’s more about big clubs versus small clubs on the mobility side, which is very much a Tale of Two Cities kind of thing.

“Whether you’re talking about ADAC in Germany, or RAC in London, or wherever you want to look in Europe, their concerns are very much more focused on the FIA as a partner in approaching government.

“Whereas, if you’re talking about smaller clubs, they’re talking about, ‘How do we grow? What are the services you can provide us so that we can get in the game?’

“You’ll see all of that laid out in the manifesto, very detailed. I’m not naturally known as a mobility expert, but I have mobility experts on the team. What has been a key part of my career as a motorsport executive, it’s very important that I’m not known as ‘ex-F1 steward’, I have a 35-year career of managing large organisations in motorsport, and managing those organisations is all about teamwork.

“I’m very much about servant leadership. The one thing I know about sport is I would not dare to go tell a Formula 1 driver what to do, even though, as a Formula 1 steward, I can tell them what not to do, but not what to do.

“So, when you know that you’re not always the smartest person in the room on any given topic, the thing is to get a team around you that is smart on this stuff and let the team work, empower them, get them involved.

“I think that’s a strength that I have, that I am inclusive of other people’s ideas. So the mobility manifesto is a work of many people. The sports [manifesto is] to come, and these things are really resonating.

“The content of the manifestos, all three of them, comes from the feedback from the clubs. It’s not only our ideas, it’s ideas that are coming from the clubs. ‘Hey, what about this? What about this? If you could just do this, that would work better for us.’

“It’s that listening skill that really is a big point of difference between the two campaigns.”

Since speaking with Mayer, Ben Sulayem has confirmed the commencement of his ‘FIA For Members’ campaign as he bids for re-election. His website outlines his manifesto, as well as his full Presidential List, ie. his proposed cabinet of officials.

Mayer is yet to announce any members of his Presidential List, which requires the proposed candidates for the President of the Senate, a Deputy President for Sport, and a Deputy President for Automobile Mobility and Tourism, as well as seven vice-presidents for sport.

While Ben Sulayem has revealed his List before being required to, candidates must submit their Lists formally to the FIA between the 3rd and 24th of October.

You’re using the word ‘our’ and team’ quite frequently – does that mean you have your Presidential List decided upon?

Tim Mayer: “No, we won’t do that until the last minute. I know in Silverstone I had said, ‘Oh, we’ll be doing it in the next 30 days’.

“Well, the learning point was that there’s no advantage to doing that and considerable disadvantages. So the way the regulations have stacked up on that side, it’s to our advantage to do it at the last possible minute, which, by the way, is what Mohammed did four years ago.”

Can you give an example of such a disadvantage?

Tim Mayer: “Well, the nominations committee is a committee that has been appointed by Mohammed. So, giving them more time to dig around and find things… I think we have an example in US politics right now that one of the Federal Reserve members may have put a decimal place in the wrong spot in their mortgage application, and [Donald] Trump has fired her on that point.

“I don’t know that we’re going to get quite that petty in this campaign, but little things like that are giving them more time to criticise and whatever.

“I don’t even know that they’re going to bother to put out a manifesto. So giving them more time for points of comparison doesn’t do this any good.

“Plus, the other thing is that we’re sort of playing a Tetris game with the names to make sure that we have the most powerful combination. A lot of that has to do with my travels around the world. Meeting with different people and seeing who we can get on side.”

Initially, Mayer’s campaign reveal had also put firm dates in place for the publishing of the different parts of his manifesto, visible on his FIA Forward website. Shortly after, the dates were removed.

Presently, the remaining part of Mayer’s manifesto, Sport, is listed as ‘forthcoming’.

PlanetF1: How do you respond to comments that you have failed to hit the dates that you put forward for aspects of your campaign, such as the manifesto publishing? Has it been a case that getting these manifestos in place has been more complex than initially expected?

Tim Mayer: “I think that would be a fair way of putting it. But I think you put a stake in the ground, and then you learn.

“It’s reflective of our learning about how the campaign is going to go. Specifically with the manifestos, we had, even on that particular day, the vast majority of the manifestos written. What we’ve discovered in traveling around is, actually, we need to do what we said we were going to do, which is to listen to the members and reflect what they’ve said in that.

“It was optimism… maybe optimism is the wrong word, but it was probably premature on my part, because it didn’t reflect what we said we were going to do, which is to listen to the members.

“So we’ve learned that lesson, listened to the members, and that’s what’s now being reflected in the manifestos that are being released.

“Governance was relatively easy to do early on, because we have very specific ideas on that and things that we wanted to do. We put a marker out there that said, ‘Hey, this is the biggest point of difference between us and then the current regime’.

“Putting governance out there was a big deal. Frankly, there hasn’t been a lot of, ‘Yeah, we think you should do it differently’. So that one is going to stay the same.

“Mobility in particular, because it’s not necessarily my home turf, and sport… one of the things I’ve really, really focused on is that we really need to focus on regional solutions and not on big, broad, ‘Okay, this is what we can do for the world’.

“Because when you talk to somebody in East Africa, it’s a completely different story for them than it is in parts of Asia. Manufacturing bases are different. Engines for karting are different.

“All of these different specifics are different. So coming up with those solutions is going to be different in Asia than it is in Africa.

“Interestingly, the fundamentals are the same: cost, complexity, culture; it just comes down to that.

“But culturally, it’s going to be different in Asia than it is in Africa. Being sensitive to that, and being responsive to that, is a big part of what we’re about. If there’s criticism to be had, it’s fair criticism. But that’s the reason for it.”

As a first-time applicant for the highest post in the FIA, Mayer is facing a steep uphill task to topple Ben Sulayem. Not only is the incumbent a known quantity with established relationships, but several Members’ Clubs have already publicly shown their support by way of published letters.

PlanetF1: Two months into your campaign, how have the first few weeks of work and the meetings you’ve had so far stacked up against your expectations?

Tim Mayer: “We’ve got three months left. First of all, the receptiveness of members to listen to what we have to say is pleasing. I thought there were going to be doors that were firmly closed to us, and that’s just really not been the case.

“I’ve not gone to see some of [Ben Sulayem’s] vice presidents, for obvious reasons. They’re firmly in this camp. But even from the ones that have said, ‘Look, I am a supporter of Mohammed. I should tell you that upfront’.

“The conversations that we’ve had have actually been really insightful and helpful. They’re not revealing his campaign tactics or whatever, but they’re saying, ‘Here are our problems, this is what we face’.

“It has been interesting to me that people want to talk and they want to be listened to. It’s what we thought. But it’s nice to have that validated.

“My body doesn’t know what time zone it’s on! It’s been a lot of laps of the world. It’ll continue to be, we’re up for it.

“We’ve got a really strong strategy team, a very strong operations team, and there are about 18 people working full-time on the campaign. It has maybe been surprising to me what you need to really make this work. But the good news is that we had the bones of it back in July.

“Now we have the flesh – building that team has been a big part of making sure that we can get the momentum that, as we go into sort of the next phase of this, which is heading towards the announcement of the team, and then from there, it’s the building of momentum going to Tashkent [Uzbekistan].

Externally, at least, it looks like the campaigns have been clean and respectful from both sides. Would you agree with that?

Tim Mayer: “Certainly, I’ve been critical of Mohammed. In my opinion, deservedly so.

“But the members don’t want to hear me complaining. What they want is to have their voices heard, and so, when you’re listening, you’re not spending a lot of time criticising the opposition.

“I think it will continue to be that way. I mean, at the end of the day, this is an election of the members. Of the members, for the members, by the members. My ask of all the members has been, when you go in in December and you cast your vote, that you just make a decision based on what’s going to be best for you.

“I think that’s something that, when you are focused on what’s best for the members, it doesn’t end up being a slagging match.”

PlanetF1: Three months to go until the critical vote. What other observations have you made since starting your campaign?

Tim Mayer: “To me, it feels like we’ve got momentum.

“The number of people at meetings that might start ‘I don’t know whether I’m interested’ and, by the end of it, they’re like, ‘Okay, now I’m feeling invigorated, and I’m really considering voting for you’.

“It’s been a very pleasant surprise, particularly in areas of the world where Mohammed would naturally seem to have an advantage.

“I think people are genuinely thinking about what is going to be best for us in the long term, and ultimately, what’s going to be best for the FIA?

“I have no difficulty navigating this paddock, but nobody here votes.

“But I do think that the members also feel the sense that the FIA is not a well-respected member of the community. One part of the message that I’m trying to convey to the members is that we need to be the partner of choice, and the real way to get money for the members is for us to be that trusted, respected voice for motorsports – whether it’s with our promoters in Formula 1, whether it’s with our promoters in WEC or rally or wherever it may be, and not this consistently oppositional force.

“That way, we can fish in this very big pond to bring sponsors, investors, and people to help our member clubs around the world.

“Every single one of these companies has a corporate responsibility program. We should be the ones who are helping them steer that money to grassroots motorsport all over the world, to diversity programs all over the world.

“This is something that the FIA should be the leader at, ‘How do we grow this base in diversity?’

“But I think it’s difficult when you’re not the trusted, preferred brand in the industry. So I think that’s resonating with people – that’s what the role of the FIA should be, as the preferred brand. The only way to do that is to be a trusted partner of everybody in the sport.”

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