Amidst rising concern, from teams, drivers, sponsors, race promoters, broadcasters and fans, that F1 appears to be a rudderless ship veering from one crisis to another, Jean Todt (seen here arm-wrestling Bernie Ecclestone, the current process by which most F1-related decisions are resolved) believes the answer would be for the FIA, thereby presumably him, to take full control.
In recent times, teams and drivers have argued that the committee approach to running the sport isn't working and that the sport needs one steady hand on the tiller, a dictator if you will. This, of course, is exactly how Bernie Ecclestone sees it.
However, dictators have no place in Todt's vision for the sport's future.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not a dictator," he told reporters at a media briefing in Bahrain at the weekend. "If I was a dictator then I would have imposed Q1 and Q2 as it is now, with a time change, and Q3 revert to 2015. But I've been entrusted by 250 FIA members to be the president, so I cannot allow the FIA to be sued, and we would lose.
"Normally when dictators do that, and we have examples on much more important matters than in sport, they always fail," he continued. "The time of dictators is past. We have governance, I respect the governance, and as long as I am entrusted to be president of the FIA then I will follow the governance.
"The FIA should have complete control, as the regulator and the legislator of Formula 1," he insisted. "But historically it has not been like that. It is what I have inherited. It is like that."
Like Ecclestone, who has dismissed the recent open letter from the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, as political machination by their employers, the teams, Todt is also dismissive of drivers having their say.
"With all due respect, I'm not sure if you ask them how governance works, it would be doubtful they know. Maybe I'm wrong," he said. "I can sympathise with the drivers, with them saying 'We love our sport, help us to ensure we have a healthy and transparent sport'. But unless they have very specific advisors then they don't know what is the governance.
"We must wait until the renewal of the Concorde Agreement in 2020 and decide to change the governance," he concluded. "We are in 2016, and it cannot be until 2020.
"We cannot get out of this governance unless the teams, the commercial rights holder and the FIA decide to change... then we can do it tomorrow."
Interestingly, in recent weeks, there have been growing calls for the return of Todt's predecessor, Max Mosley, the man who knew how to keep the teams, and even Ecclestone, in check. However, despite his occasional observations the Briton remains focussed on his fight for independent press regulation.
When Mosley retired, from his role as FIA president he threw his weight behind Todt’s election, some, including Pitpass, fearing that the Frenchman would merely become a puppet.
However, for the most part he has not involved himself in the sport, instead concentrating on various other causes, including road safety, in what appears to be a bid to secure a political future.
And it is during this time, as the FIA appeared to take its hand from the tiller, that F1 began to lose its direction.
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