It all began so smoothly. Ron Dennis invited Formula 1 reporters to the McLaren executive dining room where, over a pleasant lunch, he outlined how access to Lewis Hamilton would be strictly controlled in 2007. Ensuring his young superstar an easy passage with the media during his debut season may have been the priority but, unknown to Dennis, in another room in the same building, an engineer was about to engage in subterfuge that would blow McLaren – and F1 – apart.

At the start of the British Grand Prix weekend, it was revealed that 780 pages of sensitive technical documents belonging to Ferrari had been leaked to McLaren. Such duplicity had never been seen before on this scale. As F1 correspondent for The Observer newspaper, I was stabbing in the dark, trying to make sense of it. Then a massive breakthrough: I managed to speak to the alleged Ferrari perpetrator on the phone.

My subsequent story on race morning sent the Ferrari press officer into orbit and led to a painful interview as he repeatedly tapped the double-page spread while shouting “Lies! Lies! Lies!” Our relationship would take a long time to recover. Meanwhile, the season was racing on at breakneck pace.

Hungary unfortunately marked another low for McLaren as their drivers engaged in a destructive bout of tit-for-tat during a complex qualifying procedure. A subsequent McLaren press conference descended into chaos, the febrile atmosphere exacerbated not long after when Fernando Alonso threatened to blackmail Dennis. Could it get any worse? Yes, it could.

In September, the FIA fined McLaren a staggering £49.2m while stripping the team of its points in the constructors’ standings; an unprecedented punishment that rocked F1 and the wider sporting world. And the season raced on.

When we reached the penultimate round in China, Alonso threw his crash helmet at the wall and punched a door off its hinges as he claimed qualifying half a second slower than Hamilton was an act of sabotage. In the race itself, a huge tactical misjudgement saw Hamilton stay out too long on worn tyres, only to slide gently and permanently into a gravel trap on the pitlane entry.

In every drama, there is usually humour. The British newspaper writers in Shanghai had been granted an exclusive post-qualifying chat with Hamilton immediately after he addressed the international media. There was surprise when an Italian journalist entered the room towards the end of our briefing and picked up a tape recorder that was still running and which, he claimed, had been accidentally left on the table. Shouting “That’s bang out of order, that is, mate!”, the man from the News of the World sprang to his feet and wrenched the recorder from the startled intruder’s hands. Lewis’s face was a picture as he sat, open-mouthed, while all hell broke loose around him. He was witnessing, at first-hand, how every branch of F1 had been affected by the tension created during this extraordinary season.

To round it off, the three-way title fight went to the wire, the McLaren drivers losing to a Ferrari driver by a single point.