Mr President: The rise and rise of Jean Todt

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Last week's FIA Prize Giving in St Petersburg, Russia was a showcase event for sport's governing body, and for its incumbent president Jean Todt.

The 72-year-old Frenchman has come a long way since he began his career in motorsport in 1966 driving the family Mini Copper in local rallying events. However, he soon decided that he was better suited to navigating than to being behind the wheel.

He raced in the World Rally Championship as co-driver to the likes of Rauno Aaltonen, Ove Andersson, Achim Warmbold, Hannu Mikkola, Jean-Luc Therier, Jean-Pierre Nicolas and Timo Makinen.

He worked for many of the competing manufacturers, and finally clinched the 1981 WRC manufacturers title at Peugeot subsidiary Talbot with driver Guy Fréquelin. By this time he was also a member of FISA Rally commission, where he was the driver’s representative.

The following year, Todt called time on his competitive career and moved full time into management. As Peugeot Sporting Director, he founded the Peugeot Talbot Sport team which won two driver and constructor titles, as well as four back-to-back wins in the Paris-Dakar rally. Peugeot also won two consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans races under Todt's stewardship.

He left Peugeot in 1993 to become team principal at Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1, where he put in place a 'dream team' consisting of driver Michael Schumacher, designer Rory Byrne and technical director Ross Brawn. By 2008, Ferrari had gone on to win a total of 14 Formula 1 titles and 106 Grands Prix.

Alongside his F1 success, Todt also rose higher in Ferrari's business hierarchy. By 2008 he was was on the Board of Directors and had been a General Manager of Ferrari and ultimately Chief Executive Officer by the time he left in 2009.

He made the break in order to stand for the post of FIA President, succeeding Max Mosely. He saw off a challenge from Finnish rally driver Ari Vatanen to win a second time in 2013 and won reelection again in 2017, although he says this will be his last term.

Todt has made driver safety in the sport his main mission, and his tenture has seen the introduction of the Halo cockpit protection system. He's received many awards over his time as FIA President, including the Grand’Croix of the Legion d’Honneur of the French Republic.

Todt's son Nicholas is co-owner of the ART Formula 2 team and previously managed the career of Felipe Massa in F1. Todt himself married actress Michelle Yeoh in 2004, and has even taken on a big screen role of his own - in Asterix at the Olympic Games where he was race director for chariot driver Schumix!

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.