Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, motor sport's governing body, believes Lewis Hamilton’s effect on the popularity of Formula One has been exaggerated. Mosley also fears continued success for the Englishman might be “negative” for F1.

Although he had no evidence, Mosley also claimed it would be “surprising” if Hamilton had known nothing of McLaren’s possession of the Ferrari dossier that cost his team a £50 million fine and disqualification from the constructors’ championship.

Hamilton, 22 and F1's first black driver, missed out on the world championship by a point following a gearbox failure in the final race. But Mosley says the attention he courted over the season could easily have gone to one of the other young drivers in the paddock.

“He has certainly helped enormously in the UK,” Mosley said. “He’s also got a lot of interest worldwide because he’s come manifestly not from a rich background. He’s just made it.

“There is always somebody new. If it wasn’t him it would be either [Nico] Rosberg or [Robert] Kubica or one of the other new stars, a [Sebastian] Vettel, would suddenly be the big one. So I think there is a tendency to exaggerate the importance of Lewis Hamilton.”

Mosley also revealed he is worried about the “Schumacher effect” should Hamilton match his 2007 performance next year. “If he does the same thing next season as he’s done this season, it will certainly have a big effect,” he said.

“It will start to be negative because we’ll get the Schumacher effect where people start writing to me saying can’t you do something to slow him down.”

Mosley spoke out ahead of next month’s FIA hearing when McLaren will seek to secure the drivers’ title for Hamilton by overturning the result of the final race in Brazil on the basis of fuel temperature offences by two other teams. McLaren have appealed against the decision not to punish the Williams and BMW Sauber for having fuel that was too cold.

If McLaren are successful, Hamilton could be promoted to fourth in the race, which would give him enough points to displace Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen as world champion.

But Mosley said: “It could happen, absolutely, because this will go to a court of appeal. That said, it’s very unlikely because, even if they excluded those cars, they are not obliged to reclassify Hamilton. There’s absolutely no need, if they don’t wish to, to change the position that Hamilton was in.”

Asked if he thought Hamilton had known more about the Ferrari information being in McLaren’s possession than has come out in public, Mosley said: “It would be surprising if he didn’t know something of what was going on, but I’ve got absolutely no evidence that he had. On that basis it would be wrong of me to suggest that he had.”