Sunday afternoon for Max Mosley was as far as he could get from the clamour of a grand-prix weekend, sitting in the garden with a cup of tea. The FIA president is enjoying a rest from the most anguished period of his professional and personal life, taking a brief holiday at his chateau in the south of France with Jean, his wife.

After having his sex life splashed across the newspapers for the past six months, every challenge should seem easy. But Mosley is planning one final sweep of the Formula One paddock to leave behind a sport fit for the future before he quits for good after 40 years.

He will be at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza next month, for his first public appearance since his infamous privacy case, with a radical agenda for change, which he says has to come in a sport ruled almost exclusively by men old enough to possess a bus pass.

His observation that the future may not include Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's ruler for three decades, sparked apoplexy at CVC Capital Partners, which owns 75 per cent of the commercial rights to Formula One and employs Ecclestone as its ringmaster. Ecclestone said that he is not going anywhere.

The private-equity group, meanwhile, scotched Mosley's suggestion that it could be tempted to sell its shares in Formula One. Donald MacKenzie, CVC's co-founder, said: “We are in this for the long term. We have no intention of selling.”

Mosley pointed out that CVC, like any other private equity business, would sell if the price was right and that Ecclestone is running a business designed to appeal to an audience whose average age is less than half his 77 years.

Mosley, 68, will retire next October at the end of his term of office, not because shenanigans in court and torture chamber have blighted a presidency that had been long on achievement until the News of the World revelations, but because he believes the time is right to go.

“There is a lot I want to do before I leave Formula One and I am determined to leave the sport in better shape for the future,” Mosley said. The ten Formula One teams have already taken the first steps towards deciding their own destiny, after forming the Formula One Team Association, under the chairmanship of Luca di Montezemolo, the Ferrari president.

Mosley's job now is to get the teams to use their financial muscle and engineering knowhow to pioneer a green transport revolution, switching from conventional petrol engines to getting, as he describes it, “more power from less energy”.

In return, he promises more complete governance of the sport, which will start with scrapping the FIA court that resulted in the £50million fine levied on McLaren after the spying row that engulfed the sport last year. In its place will come an independent judicial panel.