It looks as though Max Mosley’s days as president of the FIA, the sanctioning body for Formula One and other world-wide forms of motorsport, are numbered. On Wednesday, four of the major Formula One teams – Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW – issued statements overtly condemning Mosley and encouraging the FIA to take prompt action against him.

Over the week-end, the British tabloid “News of the World” revealed that Mosley had been involved with a British prostitution ring, engaging in sadomasochistic acts. The tabloid posted a video on its website which purports to show Mosley being greeted by five prostitutes, and then engaging in Nazi role playing during sex acts.

According to the newspaper, the video images were recorded this past Friday. Mosley’s father, Oswald, founded a British pro-Nazi group in the years prior to World War Two.

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Following that story, on Monday the FIA issued a statement saying that it had no comment and that the matter was between Mosley and the newspaper, adding that it understood that Mosley’s lawyers were in contact with the paper. Unlike the United States, Great Britain has relatively stringent libel laws and suits against newspapers by celebrities are frequent, if not common, occurrences.

According to Reuters, Mosley has responded to the teams, stating: "Given the history of BMW and Mercedes Benz, particularly before and during the Second World War, I fully understand why they would wish to strongly distance themselves from what they rightly describe as the disgraceful content of these publications.

"Unfortunately, they did not contact me before putting out their statement to ask whether the content was in fact true.

"No doubt the FIA will respond to them in due course as I am about to respond to the newspaper in question."