On the back of an intriguing four-driver championship battle and a spellbinding race at the Nurburgring last weekend, the FIA thankfully took the only sensible decision on Thursday by not penalising McLaren over the so-called “Stepneygate” Ferrari spy story.

Even Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 circus master extraordinaire, who normally enjoys and even occasionally encourages any spat between teams or drivers which keeps his sport in the media, wanted this “nonsense” switched off. The Tour de France is self-destructing, Formula One doesn’t need to follow suit.

Sweeping any wrongdoing under the carpet would not be right either, hence Thursday’s high-level FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting and current High Court actions in the UK and Italy by Ferrari. Jean Todt, the Ferrari team boss, is on the World Council but of course in this instance he could not vote, although Ferrari requested and were given permission to be involved in the questioning, which seems reasonable.

The whole crux of the matter is a package of data, which Ferrari claimed as crucial material, turning up back in April in the home of a senior, disgruntled designer at McLaren. Did that information make it into the McLaren factory and even on to the car? Ferrari seized laptops from the designer’s home and he provided a sworn affidavit to the High Court. On July 3 McLaren informed Ferrari and the FIA of their discovery of the existence of the dossier and they state that within an hour a full internal investigation commenced. Following this the FIA carefully inspected the McLaren car and its development process through this season.

It seems clear that at no point was any Ferrari material proven to be found with any other person within the team or on the car, hence the unanimous verdict by the 25 members of the World Council to declare that although McLaren, through collective corporate responsibility and because the designer undeniably had the material at home, were in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, no penalty would be applied. Apparently there were upwards of 75 people in the room with others participating by satellite link, and the questioning was comprehensive and aggressive.

The FIA have reserved the right to revisit this issue if such evidence does appear, with the possibility of powerful actions such as banning McLaren for 2007 and even 2008, but without clear evidence of knowledge or usage within McLaren there was nowhere to go regarding a penalty. Ferrari are livid to say the least and have vented their feelings without holding back. They insist “guilty”, a word not mentioned in the FIA press release, must also include “penalty”. In fact this is turning into an Italy versus Great Britain issue, with the Paris-based FIA refereeing. Even Flavio Briatore, the Italian boss of the Renault F1 team and a perennial Ferrari basher, has sided with Ferrari and called for a McLaren penalty.

The stakes are high, with all of the key teams employing 1,000 people or more and spending about £200m per year, and they all must win. I first drove a McLaren F1 car in 1982 and became their works driver in 1994. Subsequently I also managed their driver David Coulthard for eight years and currently co-manage their test driver Gary Paffett, and in all of that time they have been commercially totally correct.

I have never transacted with Ferrari but they have had very long-term relationships with drivers, key personnel and sponsors and are clearly similarly commercially correct. But this is a competitive business and all the key players, who must beat each other while also from time to time sitting on the same side of the table negotiating new commercial deals with Bernie and new regulations with the FIA, are complex and highly motivated characters who can also be brutal with each other and sometimes stretch the boundaries in their quest for success.

The problem is there are no ground rules for personnel or information transfer except for the highly successful contract recognition board which triggers when there is a driver contract dispute. Literally thousands of photographs are taken every weekend for “spying” purposes by all of the teams and these would be easy enough to scale from known dimensions such as the wheels. The teams monitor each other’s radios. They record each other’s cars for sound analysis. Personnel constantly move between teams carrying valuable knowledge.

A pertinent example here is top designer Nicolas Tombassis who, quite legitimately, transferred from Ferrari to McLaren and back to Ferrari in the past three years. Frankly, given their impressive resources, I would be surprised if each team couldn’t send to all of the other teams a pretty good blueprint of all the cars on the grid. Where do you draw the line? I imagine it’s a similar scenario in the Premier League with competitive stakeholders contracting each others’ players and managers. Except that hundreds of millions of pounds of research and development are at stake in F1.

As ever there are sub-plots. Back in Australia for the first grand prix of the season, McLaren had been informed by a “whistleblower” that Ferrari were using a device to control the floor of the car which would be considered outside the regulations. Using an unwritten but accepted procedure of asking the FIA if they could use such a device, McLaren therefore forced a new ruling which clarified this position. A clearly photographed and furious argument ensued between Martin Whit-marsh of McLaren and Todt which generated three months later a written memorandum between the two teams of how they would communicate if they saw parts on each other’s car which they felt were unacceptable. Todt is furious that McLaren didn’t mention the already known whistleblower and claims hypocrisy in the extreme. McLaren claim that naming a whistleblower is outside of the agreement about technical disputes and the event happened before the memorandum.

So where does it go from here? Stepney claims he “knows where Ferrari’s skeletons of the last 10 years are buried”, whatever that means. Ferrari are taking Stepney to court for espionage and sabotage and, in my mind’s eye, I envisage a meeting where Stepney and Todt have a firm hold on each other where it hurts most while simultaneously saying: “We’re not going to hurt each other, are we?” But it may well get a lot more serious than that, and I can see no winners in this whole smelly business.

The FIA will be keeping an eye out for any evidence of knowledge transfer into McLaren, Ferrari will surely tighten their IT protocol and try to find more ammunition against McLaren in the High Courts. Meanwhile McLaren will “whilst continuing to observe the instructions of the UK High Court in this matter provide answers to the media on any issues outside those constraints in Hungary next weekend”. In other words, try to turn the tables on Ferrari. F1 simply has to find a new code of conduct.

Fernando Alonso’s brilliant victory last weekend has put him in line for a hat-trick of world championships. Lewis Hamilton was breathtaking in his bravery and overtaking but his wrong early call for dry tyres and allowing himself to lose so much time when being lapped reminds us that he is a rookie and likely to make other errors. He needs to be faultless now to take this championship under extreme pressure. The Ferrari still seems slightly the faster car on dry tyres, if slightly less reliable, and both Felipe Massa and Kimi Raik-konen still have a real chance to steal it from the McLaren boys. The World Motor Sport Council decided it needed all to happen on the track - thank goodness.

McLaren feel the heat in spy row as championship hots up

Drivers’ championship standings

Pts 1 Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren 70 2 Fernando Alonso (Spa) McLaren 68 3 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari 59 4 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 52 5 Nick Heidfeld (Ger) BMW 36 6 Robert Kubica (Pol) BMW 24 7 Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Renault 17 8 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) Renault 15 9 Alexander Wurz (Aut) Williams 13 10 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull 8 David Coulthard (GB) Red Bull 8 12 Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota 7

Constructors’ standings

1 McLaren 138

2 Ferrari 111

3 BMW 61

4 Renault 32

5 Williams 18

6 Red Bull 16

7 Toyota 9

Remaining races

Aug 5 Hungarian Budapest Aug 26 Turkish Istanbul Sep 9 Italian Monza Sep 16 Belgian Spa Sep 30 Japanese Fuji Oct 7 Chinese Shanghai Oct 21 Brazilian Interlagos

The spying row

- The row between McLaren and Ferrari erupted when a 780-page Ferrari technical dossier was found at the home of McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan. The designer has been suspended by the team.

- The case against McLaren was heard by FIA, the governing body, who ruled in Paris on Thursday that the title race would not be affected. McLaren insisted that they did not benefit by the information. Ferrari are considering an appeal against the decision