Speaking to the BBC, Max Mosley has promised that the FIA and its agents will be closely scrutinizing McLaren and its cars next season, in order to ensure that the Woking team does not (further) benefit from the spy saga, which saw Nigel Stepney hand vital Ferrari information to Mike Coughlan, former chief designer for the British outfit.

"That was in the hands of the chief designer at precisely the moment he was designing the 2008 McLaren," said Mosley, referring to the Ferrari data. "The difficulty we have is that you're not going to find on the McLaren a part that was designed by Ferrari.

"What you may find are ideas and at this level of technology at this level of motorsport, if the idea is given to the chief designer he will make a component utilising that idea which bears no relation at all to the component perhaps being used by the other car.

"So we will be looking for the ideas," he continued. "The investigation will be thorough, it will use outside experts and we will do everything we possibly can to make sure that neither of the McLarens has no element of Ferrari intellectual property in it or if it does we will then have to consider taking some sort of action.

"That would not necessarily be preventing them from running," he admitted. "It would be more likely that they would be given a negative point allocation.

"Finding something will not be easy," he continued. "On the other hand, there are sources we are going to deploy who will give us as good a chance as its possible to have to find it."

When asked if he thought Lewis Hamilton had known about the Ferrari data in his team's possession, Mosley admitted: "He's not a known quantity to me.

"It would be surprising if he didn't know something of what was going on," he added, "but I've got absolutely no evidence that he had. On that basis it would be wrong of me to suggest that he had."