RacingDamon Hill has reopened debate around Max Mosley’s legacy with a blunt social media reply that directly challenged a birthday tribute to the former FIA president. Responding to Matt Bishop, the former McLaren and Aston Martin communications boss, Hill wrote that Mosley’s intelligence was used “in the service of hatred and division,” a striking line given Hill has previously credited Mosley with driving major Formula 1 safety changes after 1994.
The exchange started when Bishop posted a tribute marking what would have been Mosley’s 86th birthday. Bishop wrote on social media that Mosley was “scarily intelligent” and added: “Love him or loathe him, you have to admit that he was a fascinating man, although he could be hard and even cruel.”
Hill, the 1996 Formula 1 world champion and Ayrton Senna’s Williams team-mate at the time of Senna’s death at Imola in 1994, pushed back hard. In reply on social media, Hill wrote: “Don’t be fooled just because he could be ‘funny’. It was always at someone else’s expense. I’m not sure intelligence can be called that if it is employed in the service of hatred and division.”
That reaction lands differently because Hill has not always spoken about Mosley in such stark terms. Mosley led the FIA from 1993 to 2009 and remains one of the sport’s most divisive figures. According to the source material, he was widely credited with helping push through safety improvements after the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Senna in 1994. Mosley died by suicide aged 81 in May 2021 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Hill himself gave a more layered view after Mosley’s death. Speaking to Sky News in 2021, Hill, the 1996 world champion, said Mosley “was very effective in bringing in the changes that needed to be made” after the 1994 tragedies. In the same Sky News interview, Hill also said: “I think the fact that Roman Grosjean managed to survive his accident in Bahrain [in 2020] can be linked directly to the changes that were brought in under Max Mosley and the team in Formula 1, Sid Watkins and all the people who work on the safety side.”
Even then, Hill made clear his view was mixed. In that Sky News interview, he said his opinion of Mosley “might be slightly jaded” because he disagreed with some FIA decisions during his racing career. Hill pointed to the 2007 Spygate case, in which McLaren received a record $100 million fine after an employee was found with confidential Ferrari technical documents. According to the article, citing Tom Bower’s biography of Bernie Ecclestone, Mosley said of the punishment: “$5million for the offence and $95million for Ron being a t**t.”
Hill also said in the same 2021 Sky News interview that Mosley was “not afraid of standing up to [people] or creating divisions in the sport.” That line now reads almost like a bridge to his latest post. Hill once publicly recognized Mosley’s role in reshaping safety in Formula 1. Now, in a short reply to a birthday tribute, he has put the darker side of that legacy back in full view.