Max Mosley's advisers had been saying for some days that they were quite confident their man would win through. And so it came to pass yesterday as the FIA president celebrated a resounding triumph against the odds at the expense of the best interests of the sport and the organisation he claims to serve.

In surviving the vote of confidence at the FIA headquarters in Paris by 103 votes to 55, Mosley has ensured that he will remain in office for at least another 16 months. But, in so doing, he has inflicted further unnecessary damage on motor sport's governing body and further damage on Formula One, which has turned its collective back on him.

The FIA is now a traumatised organisation, with more than 50 of its member clubs having voted against its president and with several of them now planning to break away. Formula One, meanwhile, will have to find some way of working with Mosley over the months ahead.

The damage is not just to the FIA and Formula One. The wider world will have been looking on with incredulity at the way motor sport is running its affairs. How, they will be wondering, could a man either want to continue, or be allowed to continue, after having been the subject of revelations that would send anyone else scurrying into retirement and that are widely viewed as rendering Mosley unfit for the office he clings to?

Had the FIA taken the Mosley-made opportunity it was offered to rid itself of a president who has done much good work for motor sport and motoring but who has become a liability in the past three months, the bad associations would have come to a sudden stop, at least in the sports pages. But with Mosley still there, he will continue to overshadow the sport itself.

So what of the future? The FIA faces a difficult road ahead, led as it now is by a highly divisive figure. It seems likely that several of the dissenting clubs will follow the example of the German federation, the ADAC, which has announced that it is “freezing” its relations with the FIA “so long as Max Mosley holds the top FIA office of president”. Relations with Formula One are going to be awkward on a practical level, with Mosley unable to attend most grands prix and having delegated many of his public duties to two deputies. The key will be whether Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone, his friend, can patch up the falling-out they appear to have had over the scandal.

Ecclestone, the Formula One rights holder, told The Times that nothing has changed since the day the News of the World published its revelations. He and his associates have agreements with the FIA that he will honour. But Ecclestone did admit that things are going to be tricky with everyone else. “I can't see the people who didn't want to meet him now suddenly wanting to because he has won a vote in the FIA,” he said. “Why should they change their view?”