Lewis Hamilton made it clear yesterday that he has no interest in winning a World Championship that he lost on the track at the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday as a result of an appeal by his team against competitors who used illegal fuel.

Hamilton, who finished his first season in Formula One as runner-up to Kimi Raikkonen, of Ferrari, said that it would feel strange were he to be awarded the title should three other drivers who finished ahead of him at the Interlagos circuit be thrown out of the race.

“It would feel weird after Kimi did such a fantastic job in the last two races,” Hamilton said. “He won here yesterday and to have that taken away would be cruel. It wouldn’t be good for the sport. I am sure the team are doing the appeal for good reasons but, as a team, we want to win it on the track. As a driver, it is over and done with - the championship is settled.”

Hamilton’s comments came after it emerged that Ron Dennis, the McLaren Mercedes team principal, has set in motion the early stages of an appeal with the FIA, the governing body of motorsport, over a decision by the stewards not to punish teams for using illegal “cool fuel” during the race on Sunday. The FIA confirmed tonight that they had received official notification of McLaren's appeal.

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The cars in question were the BMW Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica and the Williams of Nico Rosberg. If all three drivers were retrospectively excluded from the finale in Brazil, as some observers had predicted might happen when the stewards investigated the affair on Sunday night, Hamilton would have been promoted from seventh position to fourth, enough to secure him the championship.

At issue is the temperature of the fuel used in the cars which is supposed to be within 10 degrees of the ambient air temperature. But checks during pit-stops found all three cars were using colder fuel than allowed, something which makes refuelling quicker and gives the cars a small power boost.

Stewards decided there was insufficient evidence to prove that the fuel was too cold and they were unable to say definitively what the ambient temperature was. An FIA spokesman also made clear last night, that even if the stewards had found against BMW and Williams, exclusion of the drivers from the race would not necessarily follow.

Hamilton was not interested either way. “I don’t believe it will happen,” he said. “Everyone did a great job. What can you say? If they were wrong, they were wrong but I want to win it on the track. I want to do it with style, I want to win the race, I want to win it battling it out for the lead. Being promoted after somebody has been thrown out is not the way I want to do it.”

Hamilton’s beaten team-mate, the former champion Fernando Alonso, who finished third overall for the year, was critical of McLaren’s decision. The Spaniard, whose future at the Woking-based team is expected to be sorted out within the next two weeks, said he had no doubt Raikkonen should have the title. “Raikkonen is the deserved champion. If you have more points, you are the deserved champion just like in football. He [Raikkonen] has won six races and Hamilton, like me, has won four,” Alonso said.

Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren chief executive, claimed that the team had no choice but to act because they would have faced criticism had they not done so. Speaking before he left Brazil, Whitmarsh said he did not know why Williams and BMW had not been punished. “We were surprised and don’t really understand the stewards’ decision,” he said. “Therefore, we feel that if we hadn’t lodged our intention to appeal we would surely have been criticised by fans and Formula One insiders alike for not supporting our drivers’ best interest.”

Whitmarsh argued that McLaren were not motivated by a desire to attack Ferrari or Raikkonen, despite the threat to his title that the appeal would appear to present. “I want to stress that our quarrel, if you can call it that, is not with Ferrari or with Kimi Raikkonen,” he said. “Our argument is with the stewards’ decision in relation to the cars of Rosberg, Kubica and Heidfeld.”

Heated debate surrounds fuel controversy

— Article 6.5.5 of the FIA’s technical regulations states: “No fuel on board the car may be more than 10C (50F) below ambient temperature”.

— There is nothing in the regulations that states how the ambient temperature is recorded. The stewards’ statement referred to a presumption that this would be as was recorded by Formula One Management’s timing screens, but this proved to be different than that logged by Meteo France, who are contracted by the FIA and teams.

— “Cool fuel” is more dense and therefore contains more energy per unit of volume, giving a car a slight increase in power for the first few laps on the track – a difference of up to 10hp – although it would probably decrease their overall race time by about a second.

— The increase in density would also allow the car to be refuelled faster and with more fuel than the rules of a rate no greater than 12.1 litres per second allow.

— In Brazil in 1995, Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard were disqualified after an irregularity with their fuel’s chemical fingerprint. The decision was later overturned by the FIA court of appeal because fuel experts could not agree whether they had gained an advantage.