Other FIA roles that currently have term limits include the president of anti-doping committee, and the head of the F1 cost-cap committee.
The current three-term limit was put in place by Ben Sulayem’s predecessor Jean Todt. The Frenchman replaced Max Mosley, who served as FIA president from 1993 until agreeing not to stand again following a dispute with F1 teams in 2009.
Asked by BBC Sport why it was decided to abolish term limits for all posts, rather than instate them for those that don’t currently have them, an FIA spokesperson was unable to provide a specific answer.
However, a spokesperson pointed to the NFL in the US, saying Roger Goodell had been commissioner since 2006 and had “transformed the sport into a global brand and it has an outstanding governance record”.
Last year, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, rejected the chance to stay on longer than 12 years – a move that would have required a change of statutes – saying “our organisation is best served with a change in leadership; new times are calling for new leaders”.
Tim Mayer, who was blocked from opposing Ben Sulayem for the FIA presidency because of the organisation’s election rules last year, told BBC Sport: “Term limits are not a bureaucratic detail.
“They are a fundamental safeguard of good governance, recognised as essential to preventing the concentration of power, ensuring renewal of leadership, and maintaining accountability to those an organisation exists to serve.”
Mayer also pointed to Bach, saying the IOC had “treated this as a core governance principle”.
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