FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem seeks to remove limits on presidency terms

Under the current statutes an FIA President may not serve more than three terms, be they consecutive or separate, which means a maximum of 12 years in office.

However, reports in the BBC and Motorsport have claimed Ben Sulayem is pushing to change that.

The Emirati is currently on his second term as FIA President after running unopposed with all other potential candidates not meeting the criteria for running, specifically when it came to putting together the required slate of potential vice presidents from an official list of 29 eligible for the FIA's World Motor Sport Council (WMSC).

That was the case with Swiss-French racer Laura Villars, who took the FIA to court over that matter.

Son of former McLaren boss Teddy Mayer, Tim briefly ran before withdrawing while announcing the statutes only allow the incumbent to run for the FIA presidency.

There were brief talks that Carlos Sainz Sr., whose son is a Williams driver, considered running against Ben Sulayem, but the Spaniard decided otherwise.

Going back to Ben Sulayem's plans to remove restrictions from the presidency terms, the FIA has responded with a statement to Motorsport.com.

The statement said: "A proposal has been put forward to establish a consistent approach to tenure across all FIA bodies, similar to what currently exists for the World Councils and the Senate.

"The proposal is subject to approval by the World Councils and by the General Assembly. FIA bodies retain full authority to democratically elect officeholders," the statement added.

The proposed changes for the statutes will be voted upon in the next meeting for the General Assembly.

Ben Sulayem's first term has been a tumultuous one with clashes with Formula One Management and Formula 1 drivers, but it seems the situation has calmed down now.

Ben Sulayem's next confrontation may be with power unit manufacturers, as he announced his plans to bring back V8 engines to Formula 1 by 2030/2031.