Ventriloquism: that amazing act of stagecraft whereby a person contrives to create the impression that their words are issuing from another - often a small facsimile of an actual person. Why is that when I regard Jean Todt's candidacy for Max Mosley's job I think of ventriloquism?

In the name of transparency, let me make it very clear that I am not part of any campaign for the FIA presidency. I did send an email to Ari Vatanen wishing him all the best and a couple of days later he responded with a polite, personal note of thanks. I was going to do the same with Jean Todt but his campaign web site omits a link that allows me to do so. Make of that what you will.

Maybe I missed something earlier this year but one moment Max was the all-pervading, all-powerful president of the FIA. A man squaring up to the rowdy rebels of FOTA and their threat of a breakaway F1 series. Next thing I know, the breakaway series went away and Max agreed not to stand for a further term as FIA president - although that was an undertaking I'd heard before. Granted there were press releases from some within FOTA which seemed to annoy Max into briefly un-retiring but that went away too and Max retired all over again. Or did he?

Nobody ever got around to telling me the exact connection between Max's retirement and the withdrawal of the breakaway series but one gets the impression that as much was contingent. It might be a great question to ask Bernie, who had previously registered the GP1 trademark, though I don't fancy the chances of a straight answer.

Whatever the case, Max has stood aside and that does not strike me as natural behaviour for the man. Max recently granted an interview to a woman who noted his lingering gaze on her 6-inch stiletto heels and in which he characterised himself as lazy. Everything about his FIA presidency suggests otherwise as do certain infamous tabloid videos.

Since I first wrote on this topic I have received a plethora of worrying responses. One such response I would usually dismiss as a crank. A dozen, maybe the same. But when the responses run to the numbers I have received and when the theme is so unerringly common, I find myself worried. Nobody wants to be named and stories include overt threats and bribe offers made to voting bodies and delegates personally.

In one example I am told that a representative body declared itself too busy to meet with Ari Vatanen. Too busy to meet with the man who may end up ruling the FIA? I think that a little more than irresponsible. As it happens, I later learned that the body in question has enjoyed much favour from the FIA and an F1 team once overseen by Jean Todt. Were I a member of that organisation, I would be wont to ask my executive committee some very hard questions about its voting intentions.

Another example became public when a British newspaper broke a story alleging that an endorsed member of Todt's team had made threats and offered bribes to seniors of a fellow African nation's representatives. Telephone records are sighted in this story and seem to compromise the threat-maker's outright denials.