Mohammed Ben Sulayem Re-Elected As FIA President And The Election That Never Really Opened

Mohammed Ben Sulayem has been re-elected as FIA President after the FIA presidential election 2025 confirmed him for a second four year term, running through to 2029. The vote in Tashkent passed without drama. No rival name on the ballot. No visible contest in the room. On paper it reads as stability inside world motorsport’s governing body. In reality it closes an election cycle that never truly became a race and leaves a court case that will drag the FIA straight back into the spotlight just as a new regulatory era starts to bite.

Key Points – FIA presidential election 2025

• Mohammed Ben Sulayem re-elected as FIA President, unopposed, for a second term to 2029
• The presidency is elected via a four year “presidential list” that bundles the President, Senate and deputy roles into a single vote
• Each of those roles is capped at three terms in the same position, a maximum of twelve years under the current statutes
• Rival campaigns failed to submit a complete presidential list under FIA nomination rules, with South America again decisive
• Swiss-French candidate Laura Villars continues her legal action against the FIA over the structure of the election
• The Paris hearing early next year is unlikely to rerun the vote, but it will force rare public scrutiny of the FIA’s election rules and term limits

A result decided before anyone walked into the room

The headline is simple. The mechanics beneath it are not.

The FIA’s election rules are built around a presidential list, not a single name. Any candidate has to assemble a full leadership slate. President. President of the Senate. Deputy President for Mobility. Deputy President for Sport. Seven vice presidents for sport, one from each global region plus two from Europe. All drawn from inside the FIA network and all elected together for four years.

On paper that spreads power. In practice, it can close the field before the vote even happens.

South America is where this election quietly closed itself. For this cycle there was only one eligible vice president for sport from the region, Fabiana Ecclestone, and she had already nailed her colours to Ben Sulayem’s list. Mayer and Villars both tried, but neither could convince another South American candidate to stand. Without that second name, they couldn’t build the full slate the statutes demand. And without a complete slate, their campaigns never made it as far as the ballot.

By the time the October deadlines passed, the election was structurally unopposed. The General Assembly in December did not weigh competing visions. It confirmed the only list the system allowed to reach the vote.

It is not a ballot stuffed in the dark. It is something more mundane and just as powerful. The architecture upstream of the vote quietly decides who gets to stand at all.

How the presidential list actually works

The list system matters because it shapes everything that follows.

To get a list in front of the General Assembly, a campaign needs three blocks of support. At least six full members from the national automobile clubs that hold both mobility and sporting power. At least six full members from mobility-only clubs. At least six from sporting-only ASNs. All backing one ticket. All before a single vote is cast.

Once that hurdle is cleared, the list goes to a single up or down vote. If one list is filed and passes a simple majority, every name on it is elected. If two lists qualify, they go head to head, with a second round used if nobody hits an outright majority.

On paper that creates balance. Mobility and sport. Regions and roles. In reality it rewards the campaign that locks in support early and makes it far harder for any challenger to build the same web of commitments from a standing start.

This is the framework Mayer called the illusion of democracy. The statutes still allow opposition. The way the list has to be built means that in a tight cycle, opposition rarely survives contact with the calendar.

Term limits and the ceiling on this presidency

There is a second quiet detail in the statutes that frames this result.

The President, President of the Senate and both deputy presidents are all subject to term limits. Each serves a four year mandate and can be re-elected only twice more in the same role. Three terms in total. Twelve years at the top.

Ben Sulayem’s first term ran from 2021 to 2025. This vote locks in the second, through to 2029. Under the current rules there is room for one more run after that, taking the presidency to 2033. Then the ceiling hits.

The vice presidents for sport sit slightly differently, governed through the broader World Motor Sport Council elections, but the key point is simple. The presidency is not written as an open-ended job. It has a capped lifespan.

That is why the next few years matter so much. If the statutes stay untouched, this second term becomes the bridge. Either the federation proves the reforms have worked and hands over cleanly to a successor, or it spends a third term trying to repair cracks that have already started to show.

If, at any stage, the term limits start to bend, the whole story changes. Any move to stretch the cap, create exceptions or re-interpret what counts as a maximum would not just be a technical tweak. It would reframe this entire election cycle and everything that has happened around it.

Right now, that is hypothetical. The rules say three terms. This result locks in term two. But the way this presidency handles that ceiling will decide whether the statutes look like guardrails or suggestions by the time 2029 comes around.

Villars vs FIA: the case that will not go away

That is the gap Laura Villars is trying to force into the open.

Her legal action in Paris did not stop the December vote, but it did survive it. Judges refused the emergency request to suspend the election, yet accepted there were questions serious enough to merit a full hearing next year. That is not nothing.

Villars’ argument is straightforward. If the nomination structure and regional lists produce an election with only one viable candidate, the process might satisfy the statutes but fails the basic democratic test. Democracy is not just the act of counting votes. It is the ability to stand in the first place.

The FIA’s reply is just as clear. The rules are longstanding. The criteria were published. Clubs knew the calendar, the forms and the requirements. The General Assembly followed the constitution. The result reflects the will of the membership.

On paper, the federation has done enough. In public, the optics are rough. The hearing will not overturn the ballot, but it will force lawyers, judges and onlookers to walk line by line through a governance structure the FIA usually explains only on its own terms. It will put a newly re-elected president in a position where the first big test of his second term is explaining how he was chosen.

That is not the way any leader wants to start a mandate, especially with a new Formula 1 rule set and a fresh cycle of cost cap and governance fights arriving at the same time.

Stability inside the federation

From the inside, the story looks very different.

When Ben Sulayem came in at the end of 2021, the FIA was dealing with financial strain and a difficult reputation. His presidency has been built on governance, money and control. Ethics committees reshaped. Audit processes tightened. A clearer commercial function created. The federation now points to a swing from loss back to surplus, and long term investment into member clubs, as proof that the course is working.

For many of those clubs, that is what matters. Not the online noise. Not the headlines on race weekends. They want an organisation that pays its bills, funds its programmes and does not lurch from crisis to crisis.

From that vantage point, a second term without a bruising internal fight is not an indictment. It is a sensible way to protect momentum. Changing leadership at the exact point the federation feels it has regained its footing would look like an unnecessary risk.

That is why there is such a gap between how this result feels in Paris, London or a Formula 1 paddock and how it feels inside a mobility club in another region. The same process that looks suffocating from the outside feels like calm from within.

Pressure from the outside

Fans and most people working trackside never see that internal work. They meet the FIA in the only place they experience it. On race weekends.

They see stewarding calls that arrive late. Cost cap decisions that drop months after a season ends. Penalties that look inconsistent across circuits and championships. Statements that say as little as possible and arrive long after the story has moved on. The picture they build is of a body that is powerful, opaque and slow to speak.

Drop an unopposed presidential election into that background and the narrative writes itself. It does not matter that the statutes were followed. It does not matter that the clubs turned up in Tashkent and voted. The surface-level impression is that world motorsport’s governing body has just given itself four more years without ever letting anyone really challenge for the job.

The timing makes it sharper. This second term will carry the FIA through the introduction of the 2026 Formula 1 regulations and into the first phase of that new era. It will set the tone on cost caps, sustainability targets, Formula E’s direction, safety work and how much the federation tries to say in public when things go wrong.

Even if the Paris court eventually upholds the system exactly as it is, the very act of a hearing ensures that the presidency and the rules around it stay under a level of external scrutiny the FIA has worked hard to avoid. At the moment power would prefer to talk about regulations and vision, it will be answering questions about process.

Coffee Corner Take

An unopposed re-election does not prove the FIA is corrupt. It does not prove the ballot was fixed. What it shows, again, is how little air there is around the way power works at the top of the sport.

Inside the federation, this feels like a logical reward for four years of hard, sometimes unpopular reform. The books look better. The structures are tighter. The machine is more controlled than it was at the end of the previous era.

From the outside, I keep coming back to the same picture. Challengers unable to qualify. A court case arguing the rules themselves block competition. A president starting a second term with lawyers waiting in the wings and a hard term limit already ticking in the background.

I do not expect the Paris court to blow up the statutes or rerun the vote. The more likely outcome is something quieter and more important. A public reminder that the rulebook is not just a technical document. It is the way trust is built or lost.

That is the real test for this second term. Not just how the FIA writes and enforces regulations, but how it chooses to show its workings. Whether future elections look like a genuine test of leadership or stay locked inside a system only a handful of people can ever really reach.

The vote in Tashkent answered one question. Who runs the FIA to 2029. What happens in the courtroom, and what the federation does with its term limits after that, will decide whether anyone believes the next answer when it comes.