Mathias Doutreleau: FIA has “the mission to be the guardians of the heritage”

As much as everyone likes to argue about the new F1 regulations and BoP or talk about Mission 1000 and Extreme H, the FIA is just as focused on the opposite direction of the timeline.

The preservation of vintage cars is of such importance to the federation that it maintains committees on the motorsports and non-racing sides. For the latter, the International Historical Commission “safeguards archives, fosters historical research, and raises public awareness of motoring historic” primarily by collaborating with museums and organizing exhibitions and events.

The FIA Historic Motor Sport Commission likewise focuses on putting these cars on the race or rally tracks. It oversees several vintage series like the FIA European Historic Rally Championship and Historic Hill Climb Championship. The committee and its corresponding series are headed by Mathias Doutreleau, who founded the International Concours d’Elegance.

“Anything that pertains to historic motorsports comes down to our department,” said Doutreleau in a video jointly published by the FIA and EHRC. “The FIA’s role here is actually very important in the sense that we have the mission to be the guardians of the heritage.”

The video also breaks down the FIA’s homologation process and historic database. For historic racing, the former is done through Appendix K of the International Sporting Code, which underwent a revamp in 2026 that divided the EHRC into three separate championships by eras: Pre-1992, Pre-2000, and Gravel.

“Thanks to the fact that we have access to all the archives on homologations, we can state, we can certify the cars to be in conformity with their period,” he continued. “Why is that important? It’s because otherwise you deviate from the course of history, and the future generations would be looking at cars that don’t reflect what they used to be.

“The FIA has an extensive, probably the world’s largest archives on motorsport, which is very carefully kept, currently being scanned so that we have it all digitally accessible to those who would be interested to have access to it. That is a treasure that we look after.”

Vintage cars that hope to compete require a Historic Technical Passport, which is acquired from the owner’s national sporting authority. The HTP requires details like a vehicle’s make, model, engine type, and dimensions. Once submitted to the ASN, it will be reviewed by the FIA for approval and eventually eligibility if accepted. This is especially important for historic racing since, as Doutreleau explained, “a 1965 car may have a different spec from a 1966 car” and thus must be as period-accurate as possible.

“It allows us to certify how the vehicles should be when they come into motorsports. In motorsport, because it is a competition, you have to keep a certain level of fairness,” Doutreleau continued. “If you take a historical car and you don’t know what the setup was, you think you know what the setup was or you set it up in a way which is not reflecting the period correctly, then you’re affecting the performance of the car and that’s unfair and it is again affecting the heritage.”