Max Mosley has the United Arab Emirates to thank for his victory in the crucial FIA Senate vote of confidence held on his ability to continue to rule Formula 1 earlier this month, it has been revealed.

The sport's ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone had previously controversially suggested that many of Mosley's 103 winning votes had come from African member clubs of F1's governing body [see separate story – click here], but it has now emerged that it was in fact Arabic nations that had the biggest influence.

The top flight first visited the desert region when the inaugural Bahrain Grand Prix was hosted back in 2004, and a second race is set to follow next year in Abu Dhabi, one of the seven UAE states.

Now the highest ranking motor racing official in the UAE has admitted that his input was pivotal to the outcome of the secret ballot, in which the FIA President – shamed by a tabloid exposé about his private life published on the front page of the News of the World just over three months ago – prevailed by the margin of more than two to one.

“Yes, you are right,” successful rally driver Mohammed Bin Sulayem, chief of motor sports in the UAE and a man who controlled no fewer than 41 of the 169 total votes cast, said in an interview with Gulf News.

“I got him so many votes. Yes, I made the difference. I don't deny it.”

Sulayem is a staunch Mosley supporter, and has referred to the sex scandal as a 'terrorist attack on his personal life'.

“If anyone can convince me that he has done wrong to motorsport or during his tenure his decisions have hurt Formula 1 or rallying then we have a case,” he added, “but not over his personal and private affairs.”