Jean-Marie Balestre

Jean-Marie Balestre
Jean-Marie Balestre as FIA President
President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile
In office 1985 – 23 October 1993
Preceded by	Paul Alfons von Metternich-Winneburg
Succeeded by	Max Mosley
Personal details
Born	(1921-04-09)9 April 1921 Saint-Rémy-de-Provence(Bouches-du-Rhône, France)
Died	27 March 2008(2008-03-27) (aged 86) Saint-Cloud, Paris, France
Nationality	French

Jean-Marie Balestre (9 April 1921 – 27 March 2008) was a French auto racing executive administrator, who became President of the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) from 1978 to 1991 and President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) from 1985 to 1993.

Balestre was born at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône. He studied law in Paris, and afterwards worked as a journalist on a number of publications.

Details of Balestre's activities during World War II are unknown. He was a member of the French SS, but later claimed to have been an undercover agent for the French Resistance, and received the Legion of Honour for services to France in 1968.

After the war, he worked as a journalist for Robert Hersant at a successful French automobile magazine called L'Auto-Journal. Balestre continued to work with Hersant as he expanded his publishing operations, which made Balestre a wealthy individual. He was a founding member of the Fédération Française du Sport Automobile, a French national motorsport organization, in 1950, and in 1961 became the first president of the International Karting Commission of the FIA. He was elected president of the FFSA in 1973 and president of the FIA's International Sporting Commission in 1978. He was instrumental in transforming the International Sporting Commission into the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1978.

In the late 1970s, photographs began to circulate of Balestre wearing a German SS uniform, and he took unsuccessful legal action to suppress their publication.