Few F1 fans heard of him, yet every team boss in the paddock knows him well: meet Alan Donnelly, former member of the European Parliament and Max Mosley's eyes and ears at every Grand Prix. Once responsible for the legislation papers for the unification of East and West Germany, Donnelly now finds himself working on the unification of the automakers and Formula One's interests. Jane Nottage hears from the man himself about his past, present and future. Exclusive for Atlas F1

Race day at the Canadian Grand Prix dawns warm, but the Paddock is ablaze with chat about whether little minnows Minardi will survive the season. It all hangs on a big meeting with the team bosses that will take place at Heathrow Airport the following Thursday. This meeting will also have the presence of FIA President Max Mosley and Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, but these two are not in Canada for the Grand Prix.

Instead, as the main players make their opinions known, there is one man who is quietly walking through the Paddock, collecting information: 44 year old Alan Donnelly, former member of the European Parliament, has been retained by Mosley to represent his interests at all the Grands Prix. This quiet, mild mannered man is in fact the key to how Formula One will mould itself into the future.

During the Grand Prix weekend, Donnelly is based at the FIA motorhome, mostly seen conversing with team bosses, sponsors, or executives from the automotive industry. On race day at the Canadian Grand Prix, Minardi boss Paul Stoddart arrived at the circuit and immediately went looking for Donnelly to discuss issues before the Big Meeting the following week. Donnelly would later relay the information to Mosley - the two men talk several times over a Grand Prix weekend and often meet on the monday after a race to dissect the mood of the weekend.

He is the man that the movers and shakers of Formula One seek out to discuss any number of vital issues; he treads a careful and diplomatic line between various parties and their very varied interests. And yet, he is unknown to most of the sport's fans. So who is Alan Donnelly, and how did he end up in Formula One?

"As a child I was passionate about two things: politics and Formula One motor racing," Donnelly says, quickly adding: "although contrary to popular belief I was never a big Ferrari fan. My interests were with the British teams - particularly Williams, as Frank Williams comes from my home town of Jarrow."

First of all came the political career. At the age of 16, Donnelly joined the Labour Party - his father had been a shop steward in a ship yard in Jarrow - and from that moment on his energies were put into politics. Nevertheless, Formula One was not entirely forgotten. As a young boy he and his family had taken their holidays with relatives in Bletchley, and as it was near to Silverstone, they had made their way to the British Grand Prix.

"We only had standard tickets but I remember it as being fantastically exciting - the smell, the noise and the whole atmosphere. I was always more interested in individual sports rather than team sports, and so I was attracted to motor racing as opposed to football," he recalls.

Having run the office of his childhood hero Denis Healey - a British Labour politician - during the 1983 General Election, Donnelly set his sights on the wider picture, and in 1989 he got elected to the European Parliament as MEP, representing the region of Tyne & Wear.

With the demise of the ship yards and coal mines in the North East of England, the arrival of car manufacturer Nissan was a saviour to an area racked by poverty and unemployment. This was the motive for Donnelly's decision to specialise in the car industry - a decision that would eventually bring him to FIA President Max Mosley's attention.

The decision to become a Member of the European Parliament rather than sit in the Houses of Commons in the Palace of Westminster was also one based on his roots. "The amount of money the North East of England received from Europe was significant and could be used in many ways to help people," he explains. "I didn't just want to be a back bench MP in the British Parliament. I felt I could do more as an MEP."

Donnelly cut his teeth on the then-leaders of the European Car Industry who, in the late 80s and early 90s were far removed from the visionary leaders who run the companies today. "They used to refer to Japanese car plants as Japanese implants, and were hostile to doing business with the Japanese on the basis that jobs would be threatened, when in fact all they had to do was become more competitive in the global market place," Donnelly recalls.

Donnelly wrote the first report on economic and monetary union in 1989, when he worked closely with European President Jacques Delores, but his moment of true glory came at the end of 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the face of Europe effectively changed overnight.

Delores asked the young 31 year old MEP to write the legislation on German Unification. Suddenly Donnelly was transported to a world which he had previously only seen on film. "I went through Checkpoint Charlie to meet the new provisional government of East Germany and also met Chancellor Helmut Kohl many times, who along with the French President Mitterand was one of the great post war leaders in Europe. They were the driving force in creating the European Economic Community and the Single Currency."

Donnelly's work in bringing the ragged East German economy into Europe earned him an Honorary Knighthood from the Germans. "To be made a Knight Commander of Germany was a big honour for me," he says today. "My parents were thrilled and it was a big moment in my life."

This work with the Germans formed a strong alliance that is still apparent today and was vital in steering the FIA-driven legislation on crash testing through the European Parliament some years later.

Donnelly's work in Europe had come to the attention of Mosley, who - after the catastrophic weekend of Imola in 1994 - was trying to rewrite the crash test legislation which he had discovered was woefully inadequate. With a largely hostile European car industry attempting to thwart Mosley's every move, he turned to the man who he knew could turn things around. So Donnelly wrote the European legislation on crash testing, and in spite of strong opposition from the European car industry, his strong alliance with the German, French and European Parliamentarians resulted in the legislation being passed.

The meeting between Mosley and Donnelly was to be a pivotal one for both men. As Donnelly says: "I met Max at Silverstone and enjoyed talking to him. He is a very clever man and would have made a brilliant Cabinet Minister, but instead he has channelled all his energies into the FIA, and made it into a real global force. When the FIA takes up issues, governments and organisations immediately sit up and listen."

However, it seemed as if the two men would be limited in their working relationship until Donnelly's decision to quit politics at the end of 1999, after he had led the Labour Party in the 1999 European Elections. But it still nearly didn't happen, as when he told his old friend Tony Blair of his intention to quit, the British Prime Minister was so aghast that he sent Donnelly away on two occasions with the question 'what on earth are you going to do?' ringing in his ears before accepting the inevitable.

A few months later it was the FIA President who came looking for Donnelly's help. "Round about mid-2000, Max contacted me and said he had huge problems with the European Commission," Donnelly recalls today. "The European commissioner had launched a major investigation against both the FIA and the FOM, and he appeared totally hostile to Formula One. The case had been dragging on for several years and with the recent appointment of Prof. Mario Monti as the new Competition Commissioner, Max believed that with a fresh approach from FIA and FOM the impasse might be broken.

"Max and Bernie asked me to lead the negotiations with the European Commission. Monti, a highly educated man, was open to new discussions and so his team and the FIA/FOM team met numerous times to hammer out an agreement. It took a long time to sort it all out as the agreement was complex and had to be approved by the whole European Commission."

Part of the deal was that the FIA wouldn't have any more commercial interest in Formula One, so a 100 year deal was struck with Bernie Ecclestone for more than $350 million dollars. This has gone into the setting up of the FIA Foundation, which will take on worldwide projects related to key FIA issues, with the objective of improving conditions for the 100 million motorists who make up the FIA's core interest group. As Donnelly says: "It was a long, hard slog but from a regulatory point of view the FIA is completely in the clear now. It is more democratic and transparent than almost any other international sports federation."

After a successful year with the FIA, Donnelly was made Mosley's 'ambassador' to all Grands Prix, first introduced to the press in a press conference the FIA president held at Imola earlier this year. There was a reason why Mosley witheld the announcement, though.

"At first it was like looking through very thick bullet proof glass - you couldn't get through," Donnelly explains. "And one reason why Max didn't make an announcement about my presence until Imola 2002 was because if you do anything too suddenly in this business people just pull down the shutters and close the doors. But it helped that I came from a very high level political background. In any case I always play a straight bat. What they see is what they get, there is no hidden agenda."

"I'm very glad to have Alan Donnelly at the Grands Prix, and have him as a consultant dealing with the relations we have with the car industry and the wider functions of the FIA," Mosley told the press at the San Marino GP - and immediately rumours sparked that Donnelly is in fact being groomed to inherit Mosley's job when his current tenure ends in 2005.

Not so, says Donnelly. "I don't sit on the World Council and I'm not even a member of the General Assembly of the FIA, so to imply that I am going to take over as President of the FIA is simply untrue," he exclaims.

However, what Donnelly's current role does imply, is that he is Mosley's eyes and ears at the Grands Prix and also a valuable sounding board for the many divergent interests that converge in a small, privileged space somewhere in the world every two weeks.

Over the last few years he has found the Formula One Paddock to be every bit as exciting as Politics. "Formula One is a very political environment," he says. "You have all the different layers of interests and personalities which all weave in and around each other. It is absolutely fascinating. Sometimes people ask me if I'd like to go back to politics and I tell them I get my fix here every two weeks!"

With the automakers threatening to form a breakaway racing series in 2008, Donnelly's role is important as he understands the wider interests of the car manufacturers. Canada was a case in point. "Today I had a very useful meeting with Honda, when we talked as much about what is going on in the car industry as we did about Formula One," he says, but remains mysterious about the information conveyed in the meeting.

Nevertheless, Donnelly doesn't think that the car manufacturers will eventually form a new racing series, but it is becoming apparent that there will have to be a lot more integration and a possible power shift towards the car industry within F1. And, although he has ties that go back twenty years with many of the main players in the industry, he understands the importance of Mosley and Ecclestone in Formula One.

"It irritates me when people come into the sport and start saying they are going to save Formula One," Donnelly says. "I honestly feel that Bernie hasn't had the recognition he deserves for what he's done for Formula One and Britain. He created an instantly recognisable global brand and is worth billions of pounds to the UK economy alone and supports tens of thousands of high quality jobs. Over the years Max and Bernie have carefully created something unique."

But what of his own future? Donnelly is only 44 years old with a lot of working years in front of him. At the moment he is happy to be involved in Formula One and help sort out the future of a global sport that is undoubtedly going through some deep rooted changes as it adapts to the 21st Century, but Formula One is not his entire life.

"I do have other clients, although my core business is with the FIA and my business partners tend to deal with the other aspects of the company," he says, referring to the consultency agency he set up two years ago, Sovereign Strategy. "Our business is centred around Europe and we give advice to companies on how to do business effectively within the European Union," he explains.

His business moved from being based in a converted bathroom in his house in Jarrow, to a headquarters in Newcastle with offices in London and Brussels, and there is little doubt that at some time in the future a return to politics is a strong possibility. "I'm not thinking of it at the moment, but in ten years time who knows?

"People ask me what I'd like to see achieved in Formula One. What I'd really like to see is for people to appreciate what Max, Bernie and the team owners have achieved, and make them realise that this isn't a sport that has just been thrown together. It has been an extremely difficult process to get where we are today, and you have to be damn careful before you start changing it."