FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem will step back from direct involvement in Formula 1 in what the governing body says is a pre-planned move.

Ben Sulayem has been at the centre of a growing controversy in the F1 off-season as long-running tensions between the FIA and F1 have started to bubble to the surface.

There have been clashes over matters such as expanding the F1 grid – with the president’s desire to add new teams like Andretti Cadillac not met with the same enthusiasm from F1 and its existing teams – and also revisions to the International Sporting Code that some have contested are a violation of drivers’ free speech.

Ben Sulayem has personally been in the spotlight for comments he has made about the Andretti bid, and the emergence an archived 2001 version of his website in which he was quoted as saying he did not like “women who think they are smarter than men, for they are not in truth” – remarks that the FIA said “do not reflect his beliefs”.