The team’s submission stems from a report compiled by the FIA’s Technical Department and presented to the World Motor Sport Council in Monaco last Friday.

Fearing expulsion from the 2008 championship, which would have left Hamilton sitting on the sidelines for a year, McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh wrote a grovelling letter to the FIA and WMSC two days earlier.

Whitmarsh concedes to the team’s “sincere regret” with regard to a number of the matters conveyed in the report, and “apologises wholeheartedly” to the FIA for the embarrassment caused.

In an attempt to atone for their indiscretions, Whitmarsh proposed “to open a dialogue whereby McLaren would make every effort to try and improve its relationship with the FIA”.

McLaren further offered to put a freeze on developments that could be determined as deriving from the stolen Ferrari information that sparked the entire furore.

The team’s suggestions appear to have satisfied FIA president Max Mosley, who had called an EGM of the WMSC for February 14 in Paris to discuss the McLaren situation with the other Formula One teams.

Mosley has now asked the WMSC members for consent to cancel the hearing “in light of McLaren’s public apology and undertakings”, and “in the interests of the sport, to consider this matter closed”.

If the council members agree, it appears Formula One can move on from the whole sorry saga.

But for McLaren, the repercussions could be felt for some time to come, as Whitmarsh outlined in the letter to Mosley.

In it, he reveals “the long-term damage to the team’s previously outstanding record and commercial capability is significantly greater than that potentially envisaged by the fiscal penalty previously imposed upon the team”.

McLaren were fined £50m (€70m) and stripped of all constructors’ points for the 2007 season after they were found guilty of being in unauthorised possession of confidential information belonging to Ferrari.

McLaren continued to plead their innocence after the hearing, with Whitmarsh again doing so prior to last Friday’s hearing, despite his letter written 48 hours previously.

But the Technical Department’s report was damning as they reached the conclusion McLaren were intent on using the Ferrari information on their 2008 car.

They were also satisfied several senior McLaren engineers were party to the information initially stolen by Ferrari’s former head of performance development Nigel Stepney and passed onto Mike Coughlan, the former chief designer at McLaren.

The report also severely criticised McLaren for their own woeful internal investigations, claiming they did not appear “very thorough”.

There are now red faces all round within McLaren, although the team are free to concentrate on next season, albeit with these words serving as an epitaph to a damaging year.

Part of a statement released yesterday read: “McLaren wish to make a public apology to the FIA, Ferrari, the Formula One community and to Formula One fans throughout the world and offer their assurance that changes are now being made which will ensure that nothing comparable to what has taken place will ever happen again.”