The upcoming FIA Presidential Election, scheduled for December 12, 2025, is now subject to a major legal challenge filed in a Paris court, casting uncertainty over the vote. Swiss racing driver and entrepreneur Laura Villars has formally filed a summons against the International Automobile Federation (FIA) to challenge election rules that critics argue effectively prevent any rival candidate from standing against incumbent President Mohammed Ben Sulayem.
The core of the complaint focuses on the requirement that all presidential candidates must submit a full slate of vice-presidents, one from each of the FIA’s six global regions. Villars’s legal action highlights that the only available candidate from the South American region, Fabiana Ecclestone, is already on Ben Sulayem’s confirmed list, making it impossible for any other slate to be completed by the October 24 deadline.
Villars’s legal team has requested the court to order the suspension of the election until a ruling is made on the dispute, arguing the current process violates the FIA’s own statutes on democracy and pluralism. A preliminary hearing on the matter has been set for November 10, 2025. Villars stated: “I am not acting against the FIA, I am acting to preserve it.”
The FIA Election Legal Challenge Ben Sulayem faces follows the recent withdrawal of another challenger, Tim Mayer, who condemned the process as offering an “illusion of democracy.” With Ben Sulayem currently poised to be re-elected unopposed, the intervention of the French judiciary intensifies scrutiny on the governance and transparency of motor racing’s governing body.
