Maybe Max Mosley is not finished after all. Last night the FIA president, who was reported to have been stripped of his power in a dramatic end to his 16-year reign, said that the Formula One teams had deliberately misled the media about the deal they did with him and he now considers his “options open”.

In a letter to Luca Di Montezemolo, the president of Ferrari and the Formula One Teams Association (Fota), that Mosley’s office leaked to The Times, a furious Mosley accused Di Montezemolo of misrepresenting their agreement and breaking an understanding that both would present a positive and truthful account of it to the media.

Mosley said: “I was astonished to learn that Fota has been briefing the press that Mr Boeri [Michel Boeri, the president of the FIA senate] had taken charge of Formula One, something you know is completely untrue; that I had been forced out of office, also false; and, apparently, that I would have no role in the FIA after October, something which is plain nonsense, if only because of the FIA statutes.”

The FIA president, whose tenure is being spoken about in the past tense throughout Formula One, went on to accuse Di Montezemolo of describing him as a dictator. Mosley said this accusation, which he claimed had been suggested to the media, was grossly insulting to the 26 members of the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) and the representatives of the FIA in 122 countries who had endorsed what he and the WMSC had done over the past 18 years.

Mosley demanded that Di Montezemolo make no further “false” statements and said that the Ferrari president must apologise and correct any misleading impressions conveyed at the Fota press conference that Di Montezemolo chaired in Bologna yesterday afternoon. In the event, Di Montezemolo did no such thing.

Mosley finished with a chilling warning: “Given your and Fota’s deliberate attempt to mislead the media, I now consider my options open. At least until October, I am president of the FIA with the full authority of that office. After that it is the FIA member clubs, not you or Fota, who will decide my future.”

Ferrari responded to the leak by revealing that Di Montezemolo had written back saying that there had been a misunderstanding with the way events had been portrayed in the media and that he was “very surprised” by Mosley’s tone.

The Ferrari president also said that he was surprised that Mosley sought to question Fota’s respect for the agreement that was reached in Paris on Wednesday, confirming that the organisation would do exactly that and it expected Mosley to do the same in return. Other Fota sources suggested that Mosley’s rant was barely worth responding to.

In truth, Mosley is like a big fish running out of water. He may think he still has “options”, but the sport is moving on without him and if he tries to renege on the deal to get rid of him, Fota has made clear that it will resuscitate its plans for a breakaway series.

The press conference in Bologna had originally been called to push ahead with the teams’ plans for the breakaway. In fact, it turned into something of a celebration of what team principals believe is Mosley’s end.

Nick Fry, the chief executive of Brawn GP, spoke of Formula One now looking forward to a “very bright future” while Mario Theissen, the principal of BMW Sauber, said: “We have reached a breakthrough situation in the way that we now have a clear view of the future of the sport. It is a fantastic day for the sport, for the fans and definitely for us as teams as well.”

Flavio Briatore, his opposite number at Renault, offered the FIA president best wishes. “After many years with the presidency of Max Mosley, we want to say good luck for the retirement,” he said.

The teams say that next season cars will run under the same rules as this year and the rules will be stable until the end of 2012. There will be no budget cap, as Mosley had wanted, but the teams will endeavour to cut spending to 1990 levels in two years. A new so-called Concorde Agreement governing how the sport will be run is expected to be signed between the teams, the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone, the sport’s commercial rights-holder, within days.