As the Formula One “village” gathered at the Circuit de Catalunya yesterday before Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix, the FIA, the world governing body of motor sport, launched an anti-racism campaign in the notable absence of Max Mosley, its embattled president.

The initiative, called EveryRace and based on a website of the same name, has been put together in response to the racist abuse suffered by Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona during pre-season testing. On that occasion a small section of the crowd, dressed in black wigs and wearing shirts with the legend “Hamilton’s family” on them, hurled insults at the McLaren Mercedes driver.

In normal circumstances Mosley probably would have fronted a campaign of which the FIA can be proud, but the president was thousands of miles away attending the inaugural Jordanian round of the World Rally Championship. The launch of EveryRace was downgraded to the issuing of three e-mailed press releases on which Mosley’s name was mentioned once. A spokesman for the organisation denied that Mosley, who is facing calls to stand down after revelations about his alleged part in a sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes, had planned to travel to the Spanish Grand Prix and rejected the notion that his presence would be an embarrassment. “There was never a plan for the FIA president to attend the Spanish Grand Prix,” he said.

It had always been the case that EveryRace would be launched in a low-key manner, he added. So low-key that the two Spanish drivers in Formula One — Fernando Alonso, of Renault, and Pedro De La Rosa, the McLaren test driver — said yesterday that they had not heard about it.

The subtext to the delicate handling of EveryRace is the continuing efforts by Mosley and his close advisers to demonstrate that he can still function in his job, despite the lingering scandal, as he prepares for a full meeting of the FIA on June 3 at which he will be endorsed or sacked. In that vein, it was being pointed out that Mosley had met the Israeli Sports Minister in Jordan yesterday and has secured the unexpected coup of having been invited to Jerusalem for talks on developing motor sport in that country.

His presence at the rally in Jordan did not meet universal approval. Olivier Quesnel, a team principal of Citroën Sports, said: “We are really anxious about what happened [a reference to the scandal], but what can I say? He is the president of the FIA, so if he comes here, we are going to say, ‘Hello’. We understand that it is his private life, but the problem is that everybody knows what is in his private life.”

Another senior figure at the rally said: “We haven’t seen him for how long? And now he comes on the same weekend that Formula One is running in Spain. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with our sport being held hostage.”

While Alonso was unaware of EveryRace, Hamilton knew of it, but was unsure whether it is necessary. The British driver, looking to bounce back this weekend after disappointing races in Malaysia, where he was fifth, and Bahrain, where he finished thirteenth, said that he supports the scheme, but added: “Whether or not something needed to be done, I don’t know really. I don’t feel that this weekend’s going to be a problem for me. I know I have a lot of fans in Spain.”

The cash-starved Super Aguri team look increasingly unlikely to be able to race this weekend because last-minute talks on securing a new buyer failed to make headway.