Todt spoke to L’Equipe this week and took aim at comments from current president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who has repeatedly said he inherited a tricky financial deficit when he took over in 2021.
Speaking to the French newspaper about those remarks, Todt said: “Each year, the accounts have been largely profitable, except the last two years, marked by the COVID crisis, which could have finished the federation if we had not succeeded in quickly building the conditions which allowed F1 to be the first international competition to be organised despite lockdowns.”
But the FIA insists that things have not been blown out of proportion, as it has now opened up about how the state of the finances when Ben Sulayem’s administration arrived were “unsatisfactory and unsustainable.”
According to the FIA’s audited accounts, the governing body’s operating loss amounted to €12.8 million in 2019, €22.1m in 2020 and €24m in 2021.
After Ben Sulayem took over, the FIA had reduced its operating loss to €7.7m in 2022, with a forecasted loss of €3m this year.
It is hoped that the deficit can be further reduced in 2024, before it targets a balanced operating result in 2025.
A spokesman for the FIA has explained how serious the situation was when the new administration took over.
Source: Autosport