The court of appeal of the FIA, the world governing body of motor sport, saved Lewis Hamilton from the embarrassment of being retrospectively awarded the Formula One drivers’ championship last night when it threw out a case by McLaren Mercedes.

After a day of deliberation in the wake of a four-hour hearing in London on Thursday, the four judges decided that McLaren’s appeal against a stewards’ decision at last month’s Brazilian Grand Prix was inadmissible.

McLaren had asked the court to review the stewards’ failure to punish BMW Sauber and Williams for using fuel during the race at Interlagos that may have been cooler than allowed under the rules. The stewards decided not to take action against the teams because they could not be sure about the temperatures concerned.

Had the court ruled in McLaren’s favour, three drivers who finished ahead of Hamilton could have been disqualified, promoting the British rookie to fourth. That would have been enough to lift him above Kimi Raikkonen in the overall standings and make him champion.

However, the judges agreed with submissions by BMW, Williams and Ferrari, Raikkonen’s team, that McLaren’s case was flawed because, under Formula One’s rules, the Woking-based team had failed to fulfil the criteria to launch an appeal.

Ian Meakin, for BMW, had told the court that the stewards’ decision in Brazil had nothing to do with McLaren. “BMW submit that what McLaren should have done is filed a protest [not an appeal],” Meakin said. “Had the stewards rejected that protest, McLaren could then have become a ‘party’ under the rules and could then have appealed. This is the only correct interpretation of the rules. If you were to allow this inadmissible appeal, so to speak by the back door, this would create a bad precedent for Formula One.”

The decision is the latest in a series of calamitous encounters with the FIA this season for McLaren. They were docked constructors’ points at the Hungarian Grand Prix after Fernando Alonso prevented Hamilton from taking pole, thrown out of the constructors’ championship and fined £50 million for cheating through their possession of Ferrari technical data, and now what was widely viewed as an attempt to have Hamilton made champion by default has been thrown out.

Formula One websites have shown for weeks that fans around the world were opposed to any attempt to take Raikkonen’s title away from him a month after the event and Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s commercial rights holder, told The Times this week that he would have thought of retiring if the appeal had succeeded.

Hamilton last night repeated his view that he did not want to win the title in this way. “As I have said all along, Kimi deserved to win the championship and neither I nor anyone else at McLaren had any desire to take it off him in court. That was not the purpose of the team’s appeal,” he said.

Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren chief executive, emphasised that the appeal had been pursued in the “interests of rule clarification and rule consistency”. Whitmarsh said that the action had highlighted an area of uncertainty that should be looked at.

Jean Todt, the Ferrari chief executive, said: “The decision . . . finally brings to an end a very intense season. Today, a final and desperate attempt to change the result obtained on the track was rejected. Now all our efforts are focused on preparing for next season.”