The Italian Minister for Justice handed over the second-place trophy to Lewis Hamilton on the podium yesterday, giving rise to plenty of jokes about whether he will be demanding it back once this championship has been dragged through the various courts. At a time when the team lawyers are sweating more than the pitlane mechanics, the young English driver might have feared that Clemente Mastella was about to serve him a writ.

It is not a laughing matter for Ron Dennis, who was dabbing his eyes after a weekend he described as “a very difficult, emotional rollercoaster”. The McLaren team principal is not the only person being worn down by the continuing controversy that, in its latest twist, brought four prosecutors to spend Saturday afternoon sampling the hospitality in the team’s gleaming motorhome. Nice work for the Italian prosecutors but another unwelcome distraction for everyone else, barring devotees of Ferrari.

A whiff of scandal might set the pulse racing, it might create a week or two (or, in this case, five or six) of headlines. And allegation has followed accusation from the apparent discovery of white powder around Ferrari petrol caps to stolen dossiers. The affair has caused fascination, but it can only eat away at the innards of the sport in the long run. The Carlos Tévez saga, Christine Ohuruogo, or, given that we are in Italy, the Calciopoli scandal that caused the Serie A table to be rewritten long after the matches had concluded; sport suffers lasting damage as the hysteria of the breaking story turns to anger and then to dismay and, in the worst cases (cycling and athletics beware), to disinterest.

Nothing turns off the sports fan more than the nagging doubt that they cannot believe in what they are seeing. And before this Thursday’s gathering of the FIA, the world governing body, could we really be sure that we had seen Hamilton and Fernando Alonso strengthen their grip on the top two places in the drivers’ championship?

Was the brilliance of Hamilton’s overtaking of Kimi Raikkonen – requiring late braking from nearly 220mph to less than 45mph and more than 3.5G in gravitational force (the legal maximum for a rollercoaster) – to be one of the defining moments of the season or is that to be in a room full of lawyers and other suits in Paris?

No wonder Hamilton was moved to speak with unexpected force, talking of his “hate” for the politics of Formula 1 and using emotional phrases such as a “a big knife that cuts off your blood-line” to describe how he would feel if some of the 92 points he has amassed were to be ripped away from him.

Dennis attempted to maintain a more composed stance despite the telltale red eyes. Earlier in the day, he had authorised the issuing of a strong statement in which McLaren alleged that the prosecutors’ visit had been arranged to cause maximum disruption to qualifying.

Victory enabled him to be more composed. Dennis claimed that, as he stood on the podium, he had not felt animosity towards the ranks of Ferrari fans on the track beneath him so much as a swelling pride that his team had secured a fourth one-two finish.

“They may have strong and passionate views about their national team,” he said, “but the vast majority just enjoyed a great race.”

The chatrooms and the Tifosi websites tell a different story and, of course, if McLaren are found to have benefited from information illegally obtained, justice will have to be done. But the damage to the sport should not be underestimated if this saga is allowed to drag on for much longer or if the FIAis not seen to have acted firmly and fairly.

Dennis declined to be drawn yesterday as to whether the achievements of his drivers, particularly Hamilton, were being tarnished.

“I’ve got other things to think about,” he said, but he must be desperate to move on at a time when he has so much to be pleased about. This weekend, he even managed to keep a lid on the problems between Alonso and the team.

Victory helps, of course, and although Alonso’s win has made it likely that the Spaniard could overtake Hamilton and spoil one of the great stories in English sport, the young man from Stevenage (soon to be Monte Carlo) could probably live with that given that time, and talent, is on his side. What would really hurt is to see the final table dotted with points reductions and asterisks.