Tim Mayer meeting with Jim France in Daytona over Rolex weekend

Should-be FIA president Tim Mayer is traveling to Daytona today to meet with NASCAR CEO/chairman and IMSA team owner Jim France during the Rolex 24 weekend. Mayer is looking for his next move after his doomed but symbolically important FIA presidential campaign, and he says it would be nice to find a “paying gig.”

Mayer was catching up with an old friend — Julie Bentley, president of the International GT racing series — at the gate for a Wednesday afternoon flight from Atlanta to Daytona Beach. I was, uh, well, eavesdropping, and now we are all on the flight to Daytona together. I am sitting next to a guy who spots for Graham Rahal in IndyCar. He used to spot for the RLL BMW prototypes at IMSA races, but that working relationship did not survive BMW’s transition of that program to the European W Racing Team that runs the cars in the World Endurance Championship. He wasn’t going to be working the Rolex at all, but he got a last-minute call from a friend to spot for the Era Motorsport #18 LMP2 running Jacob Abel, Ferdinand Habsburg, Naveen Rao, and Logan Sargeant.

Anyway, that’s all completely irrelevant. Mayer gave a fascinating account of the FIA presidential campaign and how self-appointed-president-for-life Mohammed bin Sulayem recruited select regional leaders to lock out the ballot for him. No new scandals or anything were revealed, but Mayer figures one will bring down MBS sooner or later.

“Mohammed is one of those guys where you’re either an enemy or you’re a future enemy,” Mayer told Bentley, and this paranoid style of motorsport governance will surely fail, as motor racing runs on friendships, and MBS will eventually have none.

Mayer was seated in first class. I intended to say “Thank you for trying” to him as I passed in the aisle, but he was extremely conspicuousky fake-listening to his phone while looking out the window.