Mosley was born on 13 April 1940 in London. His father was Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, and his mother was Diana Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters. In the month after Mosley's birth, his father was interned under Defence Regulation 18B; his mother was imprisoned a month later. Max and his brother Alexander were separated from their parents for the first few years of their lives. The family was refused entry to several schools and was initially tutored at home. At thirteen, Mosley was sent to Stein an der Traun in Germany for two years, where he learned to speak fluent German. He attended Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a degree in physics in 1961, then studied law at Gray's Inn and qualified as a barrister in 1964, specialising in patent and trademark law.
From their teens to early twenties, Mosley and his brother were involved with their father's post-war party, the far-right Union Movement. In a 1961 by-election, Mosley served as election agent for Walter Hesketh, the party's parliamentary candidate for Manchester Moss Side. By 1964, when he began work as a barrister, he was no longer involved in politics.
While at university, Mosley attended a motor race at Silverstone with his wife and was drawn to the sport. After qualifying as a barrister, he taught law in the evenings to fund racing. He competed in over 40 races at national level in the UK in 1966 and 1967, winning twelve and setting several class lap records. In 1968, he formed the London Racing Team in partnership with driver Chris Lambert to compete in European Formula Two; their cars were prepared by Frank Williams, later a Formula One team owner. His best result that year was eighth at a non-championship race at Monza. Engine builder Brian Hart described Mosley as "not particularly quick, but a thinking driver" who kept out of trouble and used his head. Mosley's first Formula Two race was the 1968 Deutschland Trophäe at Hockenheim, in which double world champion Jim Clark was killed. Within two years, both 1968 teammates Piers Courage and Chris Lambert were dead in racing accidents.
In 1969, after two large accidents due to breakages on his Lotus car, Mosley retired from driving. He co-founded March Engineering with Robin Herd, Alan Rees, and Graham Coaker, handling legal and commercial matters. The name March is an acronym of the founders' initials; the 'M' stands for Mosley. Each founder put in £2,500 of capital.
March entered Formula One in 1970. Mosley negotiated the entry of five March cars for the first race, two run by the works team and the rest by customers. He also secured sponsorship from tyre maker Firestone and STP. March cars won three of their first four races; one of those victories was the 1970 Spanish Grand Prix, a world championship race won by reigning champion Jackie Stewart in a customer car run by Tyrrell Racing. March finished third in the 1970 Constructors' Championship. Despite early success, the operation fell into financial difficulty almost immediately. By the end of the season, Mosley demanded full control of the finances; his co-founder Coaker left shortly afterwards. Mosley and Herd borrowed £20,000 from relatives and friends, reportedly from Mosley's half-brother Jonathan Guinness, to carry the company into its second year.
In 1971, March again finished third in the Constructors' Championship, with works driver Ronnie Peterson finishing second in the Drivers' Championship. A deal with Alfa Romeo to use their engines in a third car brought funding, though the engines proved uncompetitive. March lost £71,000 by the end of 1971. Mosley organised extensive test sessions for journalists and drivers and arranged a novel scheme for drivers to rent cars and engines rather than buying them outright. A deal with Jochen Neerpasch at Ford led eventually — when Neerpasch moved to BMW — to an exclusive arrangement to use BMW's Formula Two engine for the 1973 season. March cars powered by BMW engines won five of the next eleven European Formula Two championships.
Works March cars won single races in both 1975 and 1976. By the end of 1977, Mosley left March to work for FOCA full-time, selling his shares to Herd but remaining as a director. March's involvement in Formula One ended that same year.
From 1969, Mosley represented March at the Grand Prix Constructors' Association. In 1971, businessman Bernie Ecclestone bought the Brabham team and the two quickly began operating as a team within the association. The Formula One Constructors' Association (FOCA) was created in 1974 by Ecclestone, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Mosley, Ken Tyrrell, and Frank Williams. After leaving March in 1977, Mosley officially became legal advisor to FOCA. He and Marco Piccinini negotiated the first version of the Concorde Agreement, which settled a dispute between FOCA and FISA by giving FISA control of the rules and FOCA control of commercial and television rights. In the early 1980s, Mosley represented FOCA in the "FISA–FOCA war", a conflict between FOCA — representing mainly UK-based independent teams — and FISA, supported by manufacturer-owned constructors including Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Renault. In 1980, FOCA announced its own World Federation of Motor Sport and ran the non-championship 1981 South African Grand Prix. Worldwide television coverage of that event helped persuade FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre to negotiate a settlement.
In 1986, with the support of Ecclestone and Balestre, Mosley became president of the FISA Manufacturers' Commission. That same year he established Simtek Research, a racing technical consultancy, with Nick Wirth. He sold his share of Simtek in 1991 when he was elected president of FISA, beating Balestre by 43 votes to 29. Mosley stated his decision to challenge was prompted by Balestre's reported intervention to ensure that race stewards disqualified Ayrton Senna from the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix in favour of his countryman Alain Prost. He resigned and sought re-affirmation of his mandate one year later; FISA immediately re-elected him.
In 1993, Mosley agreed with Balestre that the Frenchman would stand down as FIA president in Mosley's favour, in return for a newly created role as President of the FIA Senate. The FISA was merged into the FIA as its sporting arm. Following the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, Mosley formed an Advisory Expert Group chaired by Professor Sid Watkins to research and improve safety in motor racing. He did not attend Senna's funeral but attended Ratzenberger's, stating "I went to his funeral because everyone went to Senna's." Resulting safety measures included reducing engine capacity and power, grooved tyres, the introduction of the HANS device, circuit redesign, and greatly increased crash testing requirements.
In 1995, a deal was signed between Ecclestone and the FIA passing all commercial rights to Formula One to Ecclestone for fifteen years, with the FIA receiving an index-linked annual royalty. The following year, the FIA passed rights to all its other directly sanctioned championships to Ecclestone for a further fifteen years. An attempt to extend the F1 contract by ten years in exchange for a share in Ecclestone's proposed flotation of Formula One was later vetoed by the European Commission. Three team principals — Ron Dennis of McLaren, Frank Williams, and Ken Tyrrell — objected strongly, refusing to sign the 1997 Concorde Agreement without increased financial returns.
Mosley was elected to his second term as FIA president in October 1997. The EU Commission Directorate-General for Competition made a preliminary decision against Ecclestone and the FIA later that year. Mosley extended Ecclestone's rights for F1 coverage to 100 years from the initial 15, arguing that a deal of such length could not be anti-competitive as it was effectively an outright sale. The Commission agreed. In order to maintain impartiality, Mosley removed himself from the negotiations, which eventually returned around $300 million. The FIA Foundation was created in 2001 to direct almost all of those funds towards road safety and motorsport safety work. During this period, Mosley also sought to delay European legislation banning tobacco advertising. He and Ecclestone, both Labour Party donors, met Prime Minister Tony Blair on 16 October 1997 to argue for exemptions for Formula One; Mosley contended that a ban would cause races to move outside Europe while coverage including tobacco logos would still be broadcast into the EU. The revised European directive banned sponsorship from 2003, with a further three-year extension for global sports including Formula One; the directive was overturned in the European Court of Justice in October 2000 and replaced by a new Tobacco Advertising Directive that took effect in July 2005.
Asked in 2003 about his most enduring achievement as FIA president, Mosley replied: "I think using Formula One to push ENCAP Crash-Testing." The FIA became involved in the Euro NCAP programme in 1996 and Mosley chaired the body from its launch as Euro NCAP in 1997 to 2004. The EU Commission in 2000 stated that EuroNCAP had become "the single most important mechanism for achieving advances in vehicle safety."
Mosley was elected to his third term in 2001. In 2004, he announced he would step down one year early, then rescinded the decision after the FIA Senate called for him to stay. In 2004, he expressed that Jean Todt, then Ferrari's team principal, should succeed him. At the 2005 United States Grand Prix, run with only six cars after Michelin tyres proved unsafe for the circuit, Mosley rejected a proposal to add a temporary chicane, stating: "Formula One is a dangerous activity and it would be most unwise to make fundamental changes to a circuit without following tried and tested procedures."
In 2006, Mosley announced a ten-year freeze on engine development to allow manufacturers to spend budgets on environmentally friendly technology such as the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), which was introduced in 2009. In the 2007 season, McLaren was found to have made illegal use of Ferrari intellectual property and was fined a gross $100 million and excluded from the 2007 Constructors' Championship. Mosley had received personal emails from Fernando Alonso stating that Ferrari data had been used and seen by others inside McLaren. Triple world champion Jackie Stewart criticised Mosley, and television commentator Martin Brundle suggested a "witch hunt" against the team; Brundle and the Sunday Times subsequently received a writ for libel.
Mosley was elected unopposed to his fourth term in 2005. In recognition of his contribution to road safety and motorsport, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2006. In March 2008, the News of the World released video footage and published allegations of Nazi role-playing in Mosley's private life, which he denied. Mosley won a vote of confidence at an Extraordinary General Meeting of the FIA on 3 June 2008 with 103 votes in support and 55 against. In July 2008, he won a High Court case against the News of the World for invasion of privacy; Mr Justice Eady found "no genuine basis at all for the suggestion that the participants mocked the victims of the Holocaust." Mosley subsequently brought a case against UK privacy laws in the European Court of Human Rights, seeking to require newspapers to warn subjects before publication; the court rejected the case on 10 May 2011. Mosley also launched legal action against Google in France, Germany, and the UK regarding photographs from the video; all cases were eventually settled in May 2015.
In mid-2009, the FIA and the newly formed Formula One Teams Association disagreed over rules for the 2010 season. On 23 June 2009, Mosley considered running for a fifth term in light of "an attack on my mandate," but on 24 June FOTA and the FIA reached an agreement, with Mosley agreeing not to stand for re-election. On 15 July he confirmed he would stand down and again endorsed Jean Todt as his successor. Todt subsequently became president.
Mosley died by suicide on 23 May 2021, following a diagnosis of terminal cancer, at the age of 81. The news was confirmed by Bernie Ecclestone. An inquest on 29 March 2022 confirmed he had been found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head. He had told his personal assistant of twenty years that he intended to take his own life the day before he did so. He was buried next to his mother in St. Mary's Churchyard, Swinbrook, Oxfordshire. His wife Jean died later that year, aged 81, and was interred with him.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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