From the pavement table at Pulcinella, a little Italian restaurant that is a haunt of Monaco regulars, you could almost smell the petrol and rubber left behind by the Formula One cars hours earlier. As darkness fell, a tall, slender man strode by, his back straight, his pace rapid.

Max Mosley was out on his nightly stroll, seeking a quiet corner for dinner and respite from a Monaco Grand Prix that had locked and bolted its gilded doors to him. He had spent the entire race ten days ago being forced to scuttle around the backrooms of the paddock, avoided by sponsors and teams, even long-time friends, thanks to his spectacular fall from grace after a tabloid exposé of his sexual predilection for sado-masochistic orgies with prostitutes. He was painted as Formula One's pariah, isolated from the community he helped to build, without a friend to turn to.

The reality for Max Rufus Mosley, president of the FIA, was very different. As he passed Pulcinella, I called out to a man I have known for a dozen years or more, asking him to join me. He could have kept moving, obeying the orders of lawyers not to talk to anyone who could colour his crucial meeting in Paris yesterday or damage the series of legal cases that will follow the lurid revelations in the News of the World. But Mosley pulled up a chair.

Mosley was far from downbeat - and far from an outcast in his own community in Monte Carlo, where he lives. Within seconds, Pulcinella's proprietor had sent over his best bottle of Barolo. “Signor Mosley, one of my best customers. A great man,” he told me. Tables stirred and autograph-hunters emerged holding out notebooks and napkins for Mosley to sign. Someone still likes him, it seemed.

Mosley's apartment is within a stone's throw of the circuit, a daily reminder of more than 40 years' involvement in motor racing. He lives alone, quietly, venturing out each evening to select a favourite restaurant. “One of the great treats of life is to dine alone, particularly in Monaco where there are such good places to eat,” he said. His habits are modest, a half-bottle of a good red enough to cast a rosy glow over a torrid period in his life. He remains, at 68, slim and athletic, a result of his love of skiing and snowboarding.

In spite of inherited wealth that has allowed him to work unpaid as the FIA president for 15 years, there are few extravagances. He owns a Toyota Prius hybrid car, a public demonstration of his desire to highlight green issues in motoring and Formula One, and retains a substantial family home in London's fashionable Chelsea. Jean, his wife since 1960 but who shuns the high-profile world of Formula One, lives mainly in France.

For legal reasons, Mosley was unable to go into detail about the revelations that sparked the crisis of leadership in one of the world's richest sports, but he made it clear that he was determined to fight for his professional life. “I cannot allow myself to be driven out by something which was wholly a private matter and which some people chose to make public,” he said. “What I do in my personal life does not affect my ability to run the FIA. It is ridiculous.”

Mosley has faced up to his critics and enemies all his life. The son of Sir Oswald Mosley, the infamous leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Diana Mitford, the most beautiful of the celebrated Mitford girls, he was involved in a struggle for acceptance almost from birth. He was 11 weeks old at the outset of the Second World War when his parents - married in Berlin at the home of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, with Adolf Hitler as a guest of honour - were sent to Holloway prison as potential Nazi sympathisers.

He carried the fascist label that followed him all the way to the claims that centred on his issuing prostitutes with Nazi-style orders, an allegation he vigorously denies. He had wanted to be a politician. “That was always what I really wanted to be,” he said. “I had the ambition and the desire, but it was never going to happen.”

The name was always a curse. With the forensic skills that he learnt as a barrister and his powers of persuasion, amply demonstrated by yesterday's FIA vote, he might have been a formidable voice in British politics.

Instead, it was Formula One that was to be the focus of his talents. He fell into motor racing almost by accident, but was happy to discover that few in the sport remembered or cared about the connotations of the Mosley name. He was a successful driver at junior levels and helped to found March Engineering, a team who enjoyed some success.

His easy charm and legal skills attracted the attention of another team owner, Bernie Ecclestone, who ran Brabham. They teamed up, the aristocratic former barrister with an eagle eye for detail and the former car salesman with a genius for a deal, and ended up running Formula One.

Mosley said Ecclestone, who called for his resignation, is baffled by events and perplexed by his intransigence, but that that does not get in the way of 40 years of friendship. “We speak on the phone all the time,” Mosley said. “He knows I just won't give up. I won't.”