Ron Dennis, the team principal of McLaren Mercedes, has issued his most trenchant denial yet that he, his company or any outside agency working for them had a hand in the News of the World’s exposé of Max Mosley’s appetite for alleged sado-masochistic sex with prostitutes.

The Times can also reveal that Dennis has written to one of Mosley’s most loyal allies on the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council requesting clarification of remarks made in a radio interview that appeared to link McLaren with the Mosley scandal.

Radovan Novak, the general secretary of the Czech Automobile Association and a long-time friend and supporter of the disgraced FIA president, was quoted in Prague as apparently speculating that the publication of revelations about Mosley may have been linked to the fine imposed by the FIA on McLaren for cheating last year.

The remarks are at best ambivalent and Novak’s meaning is not clear. However, Dennis was quick to stamp on what he saw as an attempt to associate him with revelations about his most ardent foe within Formula One. “We are writing to Mr Novak and are currently considering the appropriate route via which the remarks that have been attributed to him may be withdrawn or corrected,” he said.

The longer the scandal has gone on, the more the whispering campaign has continued about whether anyone or any organisation other than the News of the World was involved in exposing the FIA president’s sexual predilections. Mosley has hired the private investigations company, Quest - run by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington - to try to track down who was behind what he believes was a conspiracy to destroy him.

Shortly after the first revelations in the News of the World were published on March 30, Mosley went on record as saying that a “specialist group” had been employed to trap him by “clients” whose identity had yet to be revealed - in other words, people who were separate to the newspaper. He claimed that this had been conveyed to him by “an impeccable high-level source close to the UK police and security services”.

Dennis has consistently denied any involvement, but yesterday he went to greater efforts to extinguish the idea that he had a hand in Mosley’s difficulties.

Dennis told The Times: “As I have consistently said whenever I have been asked about this, I categorically deny that I have anything to do with the News of the World's investigation into Mr Mosley, neither does anyone connected with the McLaren Group or the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team. Neither does any agent or any other party acting on behalf of myself or anyone connected with the McLaren Group or the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team.”

It is understood that investigators employed by Quest visited the News of the World’s offices in London on Sunday. Intriguingly, Stevens is an occasional columnist with the paper.