(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-18 13:50

LONDON - Lewis Hamilton was a rookie sensation this season. Unfortunately for his McLaren Formula One team, he was not the only revelation they had to deal with.

British formula one driver Lewis Hamilton arrives at the 2007 FIA Prize Giving gala, in Monaco, Friday, Dec 7, 2007. [Agencies]

In a championship that was as thrilling and competitive on the track as it was bad-tempered and scandal-ridden off it, McLaren attracted controversy just as easily as their 22-year-old stepped into the limelight.

Spying revelations, a record $100-million fine, in-fighting, feuds, points deductions and appeals meant the Mercedes-powered team were in the thick of it from start to finish.

They could have won everything. Instead, they went from one drama to another and a great team with one of the proudest records in the sport ended up beaten, humiliated and forced into an abject apology.

While Ferrari celebrated former McLaren driver Kimi Raikkonen's stunning first title, McLaren parted company with double world champion Fernando Alonso who headed back to a future with his first love Renault.

It was one of the best of championships, with Finland's Raikkonen clawing back a 17-point deficit to win a three-way battle in the final race to take the title by a single point, and the worst of advertisements for a sport beset by tawdry spy scandals and legal arguments.

Not that the powers-that-be, who could barely have scripted a more thrilling finale, were too troubled by the commotion.

"This world championship was a bit different to normal, with all the scandals and so on," said Formula One's commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone in a typically deadpan foreword to the official review of the season.

"The spy story kept people talking. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did and we lived with it. And that's what it's all about really, the public like to read about things like that."

SPY SAGAS

The irony was that McLaren started the season determined to shrug off their grey, aloof image and replace it with something livelier.

They had a dream pairing in Britain's Hamilton and Spain's Alonso, who expected to be hailed as the man to restore the fortunes of a team that failed to win a race in 2006.

By September, it was all in tatters.

The revelations had begun when an unnamed employee of a photocopy shop near McLaren's Woking factory told Ferrari in June that someone had come in seeking to copy a 780-page dossier of the Italian team's top-secret technical information.

That person turned out to be the wife of McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan.

Within months, McLaren had been fined and stripped of all their constructors' points.

Ferrari's Nigel Stepney, accused of sabotage and feeding secrets to his team's greatest rival, and Coughlan became the talk of the paddock for all the wrong reasons. Both remain subject to legal action by Ferrari.

Yet while McLaren suffered, Renault escaped sanction in a second spy hearing after the end of the season that found them guilty of having McLaren secrets.

That puzzled many but Max Mosley, president of the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA), doubted whether all the dramas would leave any lasting damage.

"In fact it has raised public awareness," he said in a recent interview.

"That's always the paradox. When there's some big row, it tends to gain the attention of a public that wouldn't normally follow F1. So in that sense it's been positive.

"What's very important is that people believe the spying has been stopped and will continue to be stopped. Then it does no harm at all."

FERRARI TRIUMPH

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