Laura Villars ran for FIA President in 2025 and took legal action due to irregularities. Now she’s coming to the Formelaustria Race Academy Gala to give us a firsthand account.
The Swiss racing driver made her international debut in 2023 in the Ultimate Cup Series Formula 3 Series, where she immediately finished fifth overall. In 2024, Villars competed in the then-new Saudi Arabian F4 Championship, battling against drivers such as Oscar Wurz, and finished the season with six Top 10 results in 15 races. After a brief stint in the Ferrari Challenge Europe, she moved to the Ligier European Endurance Series for the 2025 season as part of the Road to Le Mans career program.
Villars hit the headlines when she ran as one of the challengers to incumbent Mohammed Ben Sulayem in the 2025 FIA presidential election. After no other candidate – including Villars – was ultimately able to challenge Ben Sulayem due to the peculiarities of the FIA election rules, the 28-year-old filed a widely publicized lawsuit.
In her complaint, the business graduate asked a Paris court to suspend the FIA presidential election, scheduled for December 12, 2025, until a decision was reached in this dispute. Although the court ruled that the complaint had to be reviewed first, and the election could therefore proceed, a main hearing is scheduled for February 16, 2026.
According to the current rules, each presidential candidate must submit a list of their potential vice presidents for sport from the FIA regional federations, as well as a list of candidates for the World Motor Sport Council. However, each representative may only appear once on each list. For South America, there is only one single representative, Fabiana Ecclestone, who confirmed her intention to work under Ben Sulayem. This meant that no other presidential candidate could present a candidate for this region and thus meet the requirements. As a result, Villars, along with her competitors Tim Mayer and Virginie Philipott, had to withdraw even before the election in Tashkent.
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