We are entering the second half of the Formula One season with astonishing rookie Lewis Hamilton apparently sitting pretty with a 12-point lead. But in F1 things tend to change very fast and there are almost certainly many twists and turns to come. It’s been an intriguing season, with a lot of renewed interest in the sport, thanks in no small part to Lewis. We have a potentially explosive battle brewing between probably the four best drivers in definitely the four best cars, so let’s hope it will decided on the tracks rather than in the courts, given that we are in the middle of “Stepneygate”, the espionage story in which the two title-contending teams Ferrari and McLaren are involved.

Last week McLaren’s suspended designer Mike Coughlan signed an affidavit, the contents of which will be critical in how both teams and the FIA resolve the issue of how 780 pages of Ferrari data and procedures ended up on the radar of at least one other team.

It was reported yesterday that Coughlan admitted in his affidavit that he had Ferrari technical drawings and internal documents and showed them to several McLaren colleagues. Coughlan allegedly said all his workmates were of the same opinion, and told him to destroy them.

Coughlan was said not to have confirmed that the documents came from former Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney.

History, and recent statements, suggest the FIA will waste no time in punishing McLaren, and therefore its drivers, if it can demonstrate any further knowledge of the documents within the team’s organisation.

It seems incredible that such complete information, compiled and refined over many years and by numerous people, can be downloaded and printed, and to an extent the team must be culpable.

If McLaren did have detailed information about the Ferrari it would take months for them to apply it to their own car, and with such different mechanical and aerodynamic concepts I can’t imagine the data is of much use in the first instance, given the gestation time of an F1 car. However, if they knew Ferrari’s strategies and fuel tank size, this would be immediately helpful, as would knowing where Ferrari might be stretching the interpretation of the rules to the limit with flexible aerodynamic parts.

Personnel constantly move teams and take knowledge and data with them. All teams hire photographers to obtain copious images of their competitors’ cars, and they record sound from the cars on track to analyse their competitor’s engine revs, gear ratios and calculated fuel loads. It’s difficult to draw the line, but clearly a blueprint of a competitor’s car is well beyond that line.

Ferrari are the form team, even though they lag behind on points because they have lacked McLaren’s reliability – the first time in more than a decade we have been able to say that. It is certainly to do with the loss of key personnel such as Ross Brawn and the disaffection of Stepney. Big lineup changes are bound to have an effect when you’re running complex and constantly evolving prototypes such as F1 cars. They also had a mid-season problem where their main wind tunnel was out of commission. They may have been hit by the governing body clamping down on moveable aerodynamic parts. Ferrari had certainly been maximising the opportunity in the regulations more than the others. But they came back with a revised car in France and Kimi Raikkonen has used this to turn his season around in the space of eight days with two consecutive victories.

Raikkonen has had a curious season. He began the year with a devastating win in Australia, but then he went missing. In Malaysia he left the door open at the first corner, did a similar thing in Bahrain, then was half-asleep under the safety car restart. He lost places off the grid, crashed during qualifying at Monaco and wasn’t performing at any level. There were stories of things not going smoothly in his life off the track, which may have been behind this lack of form. Meanwhile his teammate Felipe Massa reeled off consecutive flawless wins in Bahrain and Spain. Any world champion would be proud to have those victories on his CV; he was masterful. But in the past two races we’ve seen Raikkonen back in control. Both Ferrari drivers are in the title hunt, though they have a lot of catching up to do.

McLaren have completely turned around their reliability and it’s this, as well as their pace, that has put drivers Hamilton and Fernando Alonso first and second. Hamilton has, of course, rewritten the text book on how well a rookie can perform in terms of consistency and delivery under pressure. No rookie has ever led the championship, had nine podium finishes in a row or given their world champion teammate such a tough time. But now the hard work really begins because, as Alonso has pointed out, having to get a good result is very different from getting one while expectation is low. It may be significant that the past two races have been Hamilton’s least competitive or impressive, admittedly against a very high benchmark.

In France and Britain he slipped badly off the pace once it was clear he couldn’t win. Had Alonso not been out of position in France he would probably have beaten him, and he did so at Silverstone – by around half a minute. Something is wrong there. I don’t know whether it’s the distractions or pressure or just coincidence, but Hamilton needs to get his programme back on track at the Nurburgring next weekend. He has Alonso, Raikkonen and Massa right behind him as his problems, whatever they are, feed his rivals’ confidence. We saw Hamilton crack a little with his pit stop error but he had the reactions to save it where many others would have been five metres down the pitlane before realising. At Silverstone it was explained away as saving the engine, but when you are chasing a championship you must stay right on your rivals, pressuring them into errors, and ready to pounce if they have contact or reliability problems in the closing stages.

Alonso has shown a couple of times that he does not have full control over his emotions in the car, and in Spain and Canada that compromised his chances. But his ability is unquestioned, and he will be formidable in the run-in. He’s the only one of the four contenders who knows what it is to win the world title and what to expect in terms of pressure and how to manage it.

Driver assessments:

Lewis Hamilton - Now is when the hard work really begins. When you have to get a good result every time you go out, it becomes a different game to when you just do your thing

Fernando Alonso - He’s the only one of the four contenders who knows what it is to win the title, who knows what pressure to expect and how to manage it

Kimi Raikkonen - There were stories that things weren’t going smoothly in his life off the track and maybe that was what was behind his strange lack of form