Four men woke up on Monday morning and pinched themselves to make sure that they were still alive. One was Heikki Kovalainen, the 26-year-old Finnish driver whose McLaren was travelling at around 145mph when it left the track and rammed the tyre barrier in the Spanish Formula One Grand Prix in Barcelona on Sunday. Two were teenagers: Michael Christensen of Denmark and Facundo Regalia of Spain, whose Formula BMW cars rolled over and over during separate incidents on the first lap of a supporting race at the Spanish GP meeting. The fourth was Stephane Ortelli, a 38-year-old Frenchman whose sports car took off at speed during Sunday's Monza 1000km race and flew over the car of another competitor before coming down and wrecking itself as it bounced end over end, shedding wheels and bodywork.

A dozen years ago, four families would have been in mourning this week. For the fact that the drivers were able to wake up with no more than one case of suspected concussion and one broken ankle, each of them has Mosley to thank.

Mosley will probably have to leave his post as president of the FIA, the world motorsport federation, following the News of the World's recent exposure of his Nazi-style sado-masochistic session with five prostitutes in a Chelsea basement, although you would not put the mortgage on it. His fate will be decided at a special meeting of the FIA's general council on June 3, and Mosley will be using the intervening weeks to ensure that as many as possible of the 200-odd council members vote in his favour. He is a persuasive man in his own right, but he could do worse than invite testimony from some of the many drivers — Robert Kubica is another — whose lives have been preserved thanks to the safety measures developed and imposed during his time in office.

In the paddock at the Circuit de Catalunya at the weekend it was hard to find anyone who does not believe that, having brought his sport into disrepute and having destroyed his personal credibility by making himself a laughing stock, Mosley should go. Equally, however, many of those same people recognise that his governance has been characterised by a campaign for safety on road and track and, latterly, by a genuine attempt to bring motorsport into line with concerns about the future of the planet.

Motivation

Perhaps he was motivated by the knowledge that if something was not done, the sport would die of public disapproval, taking the prosperity of his friend Bernie Ecclestone and their gang of associates along with it. A few more deaths like that of Ayrton Senna would have done the trick. On the non-sporting side, he has also been active in promoting effective crash tests for passenger cars. And on the environmental front, only by adopting measures such as the energy-recovery system that he has made mandatory in Formula One next season will motorsport be seen to be part of the solution to climate change rather than a particularly brazen part of the problem.

These considerations, however, are largely overwhelmed by a revulsion over the story itself, particularly among those who believe the newspaper's allegations, which he denies, that the session had a Nazi theme. There is also a more general feeling that the Ecclestone-Mosley cabal has ruled Formula One for long enough, and that it is time for a clean break from its poisonous feuds, its obsession with secrecy and its network of associates and influence.

The trouble with this argument is that the next lot might be more transparent, but they might not do as good a job. While Ecclestone was spending 30 years making everyone in Formula One rich, Mosley was keeping them alive.

Another plank of his campaign is a legal action against the News of the World on the grounds of invasion of privacy. His spokesman said at the weekend that he is not bringing a libel suit because it would take too long to come to court, whereas a privacy action can be heard more quickly. There is some truth in this, although it is hard to avoid the suspicion that Mosley is reluctant to have his family history and his personal life examined by Rupert Murdoch's lawyers.

By defending the individual's right to privacy against journalism's attack dogs, however, and perhaps establishing a legal precedent in the process, he may be hoping to make himself look like a white knight, if not exactly an injured innocent.