Jun.3 (GMM) The retention of Max Mosley as FIA president is a further blow to Silverstone's hopes of retaining the British grand prix beyond 2009, Damon Hill said on Tuesday.

The 1996 world champion, who is president of the circuit-owning club the BRDC, argued that with such a controversial figure at the helm of the sport's governing body, his task of safeguarding the historic event's future is harder.

Mosley, 68, won 103 of the 169 votes in a confidence ballot in Paris earlier on Tuesday, following widespread condemnation of his involvement in a sordid sex scandal.

Hill, at odds with F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone about a new British grand prix promoters' contract for 2010, said the BRDC needs "an organisation like the FIA to help us protect our position so that we can have reasonable terms with the commercial rights holders".

"It's very difficult, though, when you have a president who is as controversial as Max is, to go to governments and argue the case for formula one," he told the BBC.

Meanwhile, despite Mosley's insistence that he will now stay on as FIA president until the end of his elected term late next year, a former grand prix team owner believes the controversial Briton could step down now on his own terms.

"My hope is he will think about the damage," Eddie Jordan told BBC radio Five Live on Tuesday.

"There are a lot of countries where F1 goes and lots of the rulers of those countries don't want to deal with him. That is clearly not acceptable.

"My hope is that he will listen to the comments and then go. I'm quite certain he will stand down before the end of the year," the Irishman, who sold his Silverstone based team at the end of the 2004 season, added.